To study the effectiveness of farm broadcasts through radio in disseminating agricultural information to the farmers of Trivandrum District

Abstract

The study was conducted in Trivandrum district of Kerala with the objective of identifying the preference of listeners with reference to node, programme, duration and frequency of farm broadcasts.It was also decided to study the relationship between selected characteristics of the listeners and their mass media exposure behaviour, listening behoviour, communication behaviour, source utilization behaviour and adoption behaviour. The selected characteristics of the listeners were age, education, occupation, farm size, crops grown, radio ownership and discussion. The available measurement techniques and scoring systems were used for Independent variables such as education (Trivedi, 1963), social participation (Trivedi, 1963) and occupation (Batlrinarayanan, 1977). Age was measured in terms of number of years the respondent had completed and the umber of acres cultivated was token as the measure of farm size. Radio ownership was measured In terms of possession of radio set. The Instruments for measuring moss media exposure behaviour was developed on the lines of Rogers and .Svenning (1969). The scales to measure listening behaviour (Badrinarayanan, 1977) arid, communication behaviour Murthy and Singh, 1974) ware used with slight modifications. The source utilisation behaviour woo measured by the scale developed by hair (1969). The adoption behaviour was measured by the Adoption Quotient as developed by Jalswal end Dave (1972). Satehoc been collected from 150 charcha samithy members using a pro-tested, valid interview schedule. Data statistically analysed using appropriate parametric techniques.