Development of scale to analyse the perception of aromatic black rice growers towards MOVCDS
Perception of the aromatic black rice growers towards MOVCDS was been operationally defined as ‘The degree to which an individual has understood the three components (production, supporting and processing and marketing) of value addition activities of MOVCDS. The method of summated rating scale suggested by
Likert (1932) and
Edwards (1969) were followed in the development of the perception scale following seven stages
viz., (1) identification of components, of MOVCDS (2) collection of statements, (3) editing of statements, (4) relevancy test, (5) item analysis, (6) reliability and (7) validity.
Identification of components of MOVCDS
Three components (production, supporting, processing and marketing) relating to the value chain activities of MOVCDS were identified were identified for the developing perception statements to analyse the perception of aromatic black rice growers towards MOVCDS.
Collection of perception statements
The second step is the collection of perception statements for analysing the perception of aromatic black rice growers towards MOVCDS.A tentative list of 36 perception statements/items classified under three components (production, supporting, processing and marketing) of value chain activities were collected through extensive review of literature and by consulting the social scientists and MOVCDS officials.
Editing of perception statements
Thirty six perception statements were edited as per the 14 criteria enunciated by
Edwards (1969) and
Thurstone and Chave (1929). As a consequence, two perception statements were eliminated and the remaining 34 perception statements were included for the study.
Relevancy test
Thirty four statements were sent to 110 experts in the field of social sciences working in State Agricultural Universities, Indian Council of Agricultural Research Institutes and Development Departments, to critically evaluate the relevancy of each statement
viz., most relevant (MR), relevant (R), somewhat relevant (SWR), less relevant (LR) and not relevant (NR) with the score of 5,4,3,2 and 1, respectively. The judges were also requested to make necessary modifications and additions or deletion of statements if they desired to. A total of 66 judges returned the questionnaires duly completed and these 66 questionnaires were considered for further processing.
From the data gathered, ‘Relevancy Percentage (RP)’ and 'Mean Relevancy Score (MRS)’ were worked out for all the 34 perception statements. Using RP and MRS, the individual perception statements were screened for relevancies using the following formulae.
a) Relevancy percentage (RP): It was obtained by using the following formula:
b) Mean relevancy score (MRS): It was worked out using the following formula:
Accordingly, the perception statements having ‘relevancy percentage’ of 75 per cent and above and ‘mean relevancy score’ of 3.75 and above were considered for final selection. Accordingly, 26 perception statements were retained after relevancy test and these statements were suitably modified and written as per the comments of the judges wherever applicable.
Item analysis
Twenty six perception statements were subjected to item analysis to delineate the items based on the extent to which they can differentiate the respondent having better perception from the respondent with poor perception regarding MOVCDS.
A sample of 35 aromatic black rice growers from non-sample area viz., Imphal West district of Manipur state were chosen for the study. The respondents were asked to indicate their degree of agreement or disagreement with each statement on a five-point continuum ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’. Based upon the total score, the respondents were arranged in descending order. The top 25 per cent of the respondents with their total scores were considered as the high group and the bottom 25 per cent as the low group. These two groups provided criterion groups in terms of evaluating the individual statements. Thus, out of 35 aromatic black rice growers to whom the items were administered for item analysis, eight respondents with highest and eight respondents with lowest scores were used as criterion groups to evaluate individual items. The critical ratio, that is, the ‘t’ value which analyses the extent to which a given statement differentiates between the better and poor perception groups of aromatic black rice growers for each statement, was calculated by using the following formula:
Where,
X̄H= The mean score on given statement of the high group.
X̄L = The mean score on given statement of the low group.
ΣX2H= Sum of squares of the individual score on a given statement for high group.
ΣX2L = Sum of squares of the individual score on a given statement for low group.
n = Number of respondents in each group.
Σ = Summation.
t = The extent to which a given statement differentiates between the high and low groups.
After computing the ‘t’ value for all the 26 perception statements, 18 perception statements (six statements each under production, supporting and processing and marketing components) with ‘t’ value equal to or greater than 1.67 were selected for the final perception scale. The tabulated values are presented in Table 1.
Reliability
Reliability refers to precision of the scale constructed for any purpose. A reliability test will be reliable when it gives the same repeated result under the same conditions. In any social science research, a newly constructed scale has to be tested for its reliability before it is used. The split-half method was employed to test the reliability of the perception scale. The value of correlation coefficient was 0.5518 and this was further corrected by using Spearman Brown formula to obtain the reliability coefficient of the whole set. The ‘r’ value of the scale was 0.771, which was significant at one per cent level indicating the high reliability of the scale. It was concluded that the perception scale constructed was reliable.
a) Half test reliability formula:
Where,
ΣX= Sum of the scores of the odd number items.
ΣY = Sum of the scores of the even number items.
ΣX2= Sum of the squares of the odd number items.
ΣY2 = Sum of the squares of the even number items.
b) Whole test reliability formula:
Where,
r
1/2 = Half test reliability.
Validity
It refers to how well a scale analyses what it is purported to measure. The square root of whole test reliability value (r1/2) gives the validity value. The data was subjected to statistical validity, which was found to be 0.8430. Hence, the validity coefficient was also found to be appropriate and suitable for the tool developed. Thus, the developed scale to analyse perception of beneficiary aromatic black rice growers towards MOVCDS.
Administration of perception scale and method of scoring
The final perception scale consists of 18 statements (Table 2) for determining the perception of aromatic black rice growers. The response was collected on a five-point continuum, namely, strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree and strongly disagree with assigned score of 5,4,3,2 and 1, respectively for positive perception statements and the score is reversed for negative statements. Of the 18 perception statements, 13 are positive statements and the remaining five are negative perception statements. The perception score of a respondent was calculated by adding up the scores obtained by him/her on all items/statements. The perception score of this scale ranges from a minimum of 18 to a maximum of 90. Based on the mean (52.51) and half standard deviation (3.26), the respondents were categorized into three perception categories,
viz., poor, good and better. Higher score on this scale indicates that the respondent has better perception towards MOVCDS and lower score on the perception scale denotes that respondent has poor perception towards MOVCDS.
Perception of aromatic black rice growers towards MOVCDS
The perception scale was administered to 35 aromatic black rice growers in Imphal West district of Manipur state during 2020-21. The results revealed that an equal number of aromatic black rice growers (34.29% each) had good and better perception towards MOVCDS, whereas the remaining 31.42 per cent of the aromatic black rice growers had poor perception towards MOVCDS (Table 3). It can be inferred from the research results that a majority of the aromatic black rice growers (68.58%) had good to better perception towards MOVCDS. The aromatic black rice growers had good to better perception in respect of production and supporting components, while poor perception was observed in respect of processing and marketing component. More or less similar findings were reported by
Naveen et al., (2018).
