MSc

A study on “Perceived usefulness and content analysis of Post Graduate theses in Agriculture: the case of College of Agriculture, Vellayani” was undertaken in the year 2018-19. The main objectives were to find out the perceived usefulness and pattern of post-graduate research studies on its contents, related parameter and trend of the identified thrust area for PG research. The study also explored and analyzed the constraints and opinions as perceived by the teachers and students in the conduct of post graduate research. The entire thesis submitted to College of Agriculture, Vellayani from 2012-2017 were enumerated under different divisions and was subjected to qualitative content analysis. The ex-post facto study of research themes for the study was covered for the period from 2008-2017. A total of 120 respondents comprising of 60 students and 60 teachers were selected for the study on perceived usefulness of PG research.
Over the years, Post Graduate (PG) research showed an increasing trend in number and maximum numbers of theses (109) were from the division of crop production. During 2008 to 2014, 12 PC groups were found to have 50 per cent or more untouched thrust areas and 90 per cent of this contributed from ‘sugarcane and tuber crops’ (STC) and ‘spices and plantation crops’ (SPC). For the period from 2015 to 2017, 11 PC groups had more than 50 per cent of untouched thrust areas among which ‘fruits’ (FR) contained 78.57 per cent of untouched areas. Irrespective of periods, the comparison between 10 similar Project Co-ordination (PC) groups revealed that out of 108 thrust areas 62 were untouched which constituted 57.40 per cent. The maximum untouched thrust areas were for FR (78.57%) and the minimum (36.36%) was for ‘vegetables’ (Veg). It was interesting to note that ‘agricultural extension and development studies’ (AEDS) touched upon all the 12 thrust areas. In most cases the number of thrust areas reduced over the years but the percentage of untouched area showed an increasing trend.
The results on content pattern of PG research was conducted for different parameters. In case of the number of words present in the title of theses, it was noted that ‘Community Science’ theses contained the minimum and maximum words (5-25). However, it was good to note that majority (76.99%) theses contained least to moderate number of words in the title. On perusal of data department wise, Agronomy comprises the lowest range (8-14) and majority of the theses (80.49%) were medium worded with a minimum of 5 to maximum of 17 words in the title. The results revealed that irrespective of different divisions, majority of the theses were found to have medium number of words in the title. The distribution of data was symmetric (0.50) in case of number of words with exception to social science theses that was moderately skewed (0.94) to the right. In case of theses title with scientific names, all the theses in the departments of Pomology and Floriculture, Vegetable Science and Plant Physiology contained scientific name. Results for the number of words in the abstract revealed that theses from the department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry and Agronomy had the least (252) and maximum (1976) number of words respectively. Summarization of results on mean number of words in theses abstract using quartiles revealed that, theses of departments from crop production, crop protection and Agricultural Statistics belonged to the medium worded category. Irrespective of different departments, it was observed that out of 287 theses 64.81 per cent addressed 2-4 numbers of objectives. Overall, the data were highly skewed (1.37) to the right. Summarization of results based on mean number references in theses using quartile revealed that crop protection and crop improvement theses had medium (103 to 148) number of references, out of which 55.93 per cent was on publication made after 2001 and 71.35 per cent of the sources were Journals. The mean number of references for the entire thesis submitted was 134. The mean number of pages per theses cutting across all departments was 116. The average number of tables, figures and appendices (56, 21 & 4) were more for theses from department of Agricultural Statistics followed by 32 tables for Social science, 16 figures for theses from departments under crop production and 3 appendices each for crop protection and social science. In case of average number of plates per theses, crop protection theses had maximum number (16) of plates. The most commonly used research design for Crop production is Randomized Block Design (44.31%), Completely Randomized Design (53.13% and 48.08%) for Crop protection and Crop improvement and Ex-post facto design (49.28%) for Social science theses. ANOVA (37.65%, 63.08% and 21.48%) is the commonly used statistical tools for analysis of theses belonging to crop production, crop protection and crop improvement. Percentage (20.41%), correlation (16.74%) and frequency (11.22%) computation followed by categorization based on mean (16.84%) or quartile (7.4%) were the major statistical tools used in social science division. Majorities (81.15%) of the studies were conducted in Thiruvananthapuram district and mainly focused on vegetables (37.07%), cereals (13.40%), fruits (12.46%) and spices (8.41%).
The dependent variables for the study were perceived usefulness and attitude of students and teachers towards PG research. 86.66 per cent of students and 97.78 per cent of teachers respectively perceived that PG research was useful to very useful in terms of personal benefits, benefits to farming community and institution undertaking research. When 68.33 per cent of the students possessed medium level of attitude towards research, 84.44 per cent teachers opined that students possessed good attitude towards PG research and only 13.33 per cent students had very good attitude. Sub-components of student’s attitude towards PG research viz., research usefulness, research anxiety, positive attitude of students, relevance to life and difficulty of research were significant at one per cent level of significance.
The common three major constraints in doing PG research as perceived by both students and teachers were lack of proper infrastructure (Rank 1) followed by scarcity of land, labour and capital (Rank 2), privation of flexibility with approved technical programme (Rank 3). Poor writing skill of students (Rank 4) was considered to be an important constraint as discerned by teachers. The major suggestions as perceived by teachers for overcoming the general constraints for undertaking PG research were encouraging interdisciplinary need based research with farmer orientation, utilization of ICAR funds for creation of a centralized multidisciplinary instrumentation lab for PG research, ensuring adequate land, labour and capital for departments undertaking field experiments and making research process flexible.