Standardized Scale of Social Audit for the Extension Institution / Services

Abstract

Social audits make organizations / services more accountable towards society. It is being used as a management tool to assess the degree of success of various initiatives of the institution / services in terms of anticipated outcomes. It assesses the mechanics of accountability, degree and level of transparency, awareness and impact. To make social audit more scientific, a standardized scale is hereby developed to link the growth of social responsibility movement. This study was conducted in the twelve purposively selected districts of Bihar namely Banka, Bhagalpur, Patna, Nalanda, Munger, Purnea, Saran, Gopalganj, Muzaffarpur, Vaishali, East Champaran & Siwan. Out of each selected districts, two blocks were selected purposively. A cluster of two village panchayats from each of the selected blocks were identified. A sample of 40 respondents was selected from each Village panchayats and accordingly total 1960 respondents were interviewed for the purpose. An exhaustive survey was conducted on eight dimensions of Social Audit. Likert technique was used for constructing the scale to measure the Social Audit of Extension Institution/ Services. The steps which followed for scale construction were item collection, editing of items, item selection, reliability of the scale, validity of the scale, administration of the scale. The study revealed that out of fifty two items related to technological, economical, social, religious, technology transfer, legal, time, programme execution areas of Social Audit, Thirty six items were found significant which constitute the scale for social audit. The highly significant correlation coefficients r = 0.78 indicate that the study was highly stable or dependable for measurement. Corresponding