A Measurement Tool to Study the e-Readiness of Extension Service Providers of Agricultural Research and Development Institutions in Telangana

Abstract

The traditional approach to agricultural extension was top-down. The scientist, at the top, was the one who created the technology and this technology was disseminated through the extension service to the farmers who had to apply this technology. The process of dissemination of innovation adopts various methods. As a means, ICTs play a key role. Over the last couple of decades ICTs have been playing a pivotal role. Hence it is important to study the e- readiness of various extension service providers of diff erent agricultural research and development institutes as they act as channels between lab to land. Upon review of existing tools to measure e-Readiness, it was felt that there is need for a reliable scale to measure the same. For the construction of the scale, summated rating method suggested by Likert (1932) was followed. Based on a review of literature 55 statements were enlisted initially and 39 statements were fi nalized for the fi nal construction of the scale. The reliability and validity of the scale were calculated to fi nd out the precision and consistency of the results.