Development and Validation of a Scale to Measure Economic Contribution of Agricultural Extension Service (ECoAES) Provided Under Karnataka Watershed Development Programme

This is to introduce and describes the construct of ‘Economic contribution of Agricultural Extension Service (ECoAES) and developing a scale on same. The present study is conducted to measure the extent of economic contributions of agriculture extension service provided under Karnataka watershed development (KAWAD) programme to the beneficiary farmers of Indi taluka in Bijapur district of Karnataka during 2014–15. The method suggested by Likert (1932) and Edwards (1969) in developing summated rating scale was followed in the construction of this scale. This scale has been standardized and found to be reliable and valid. In order to know the ECoAES, six main components (Advisory services, Land based and crop management services, capacity building services, inputs, credit and marketing services) were identified and under each component comprehensive list of 85 statements were prepared. Statements were edited as per the 14 criteria enunciated by Edwards, as a consequence 30 statements were eliminated and the remaining 55 statements were retained for further analysis. These components along with the statements were sent to 100 experts for judge's opinion with (five point continuum) and asked to rank the six components based on order of preference. Fifty two (52%) judges were responded in time. Normalized Rank order approach given by Guilford was followed in calculating the scale (Rc) values to know which component is contributing more. Rc values ranges from 6.50 to 4.37, higher the scale value means that particular component is contributing more. From the data gathered, relevancy percentage and mean relevancy score were worked out for all the 55 statements. Using these criteria the statements having relevancy percentage (> 80%) and Mean Relevancy Score (> 4.0) were retained in the final schedule. A total of 50 statements were retained out of 55 after relevancy test. Split half method developed by Brown prophecy was employed to measure the reliability. The reliability co-efficient (0.82) and statistical validity (0.91) which is higher than the standard of 0.70, indicating higher reliability and validity of the scale.