Development of knowledge test to measure the extent of knowledge of women farmers about rice production technology

Abstract

Both male and female farmers participate in rice farming but have different roles. It is therefore not appropriate to measure their knowledge level with the same yardstick. In this study, knowledge test was developed for measuring the knowledge level of women farmers who are involved in rice production. Pertinent items were collected covering all aspects of the rice production including variety and seed selection, nursery raising, site selection, land preparation; transplanting, crop management, harvesting and processing were prepared from the pertinent literature and consultation with scientific experts. After getting the jury opinion on the items, fifty-five items were selected and administered to 30 farmers. Finally, 28 knowledge items were included in the final format of the knowledge test based on the difficulty index, discrimination index and point- biserial correlation coefficient. The reliability of the knowledge test was measured with the help of split-half method and reliability coefficients was found to be r=0.63, which indicates that this knowledge test is quite reliable. To administer the knowledge test a respondent is given one mark for each correct answer and zero mark for each wrong answer. The final study was conducted in Nagaon District of Assam in improved rice cultivation practices. The knowledge test was administered 200 female farmers of Batardava development block and the result indicates that majority of the female farmers (68.75%) have medium level of knowledge.