Construction and Standardization of Knowledge Test to Measure the Level of Knowledge of Tribal Farmers on Seed Banking

Abstract

Intense knowledge on seed banks is prerequisite for ensuring seed banking and the associated traditional knowledge in tribal areas. Hence, it was thought necessary to construct a test for the purpose and an attempt has been made to develop a test for measuring knowledge of tribal farmers on seed banking. Pertinent items were collected covering all aspects of seed banking. The knowledge test was developed following step by procedures which included preliminary screening of the items based on Likert’s method through calculation of t-statistics and mean score, followed by the item analyses through derivation of difficulty index, discrimination index and point biserial correlation coefficient. The final knowledge test contained 45 items which were retained from 60 items. Each item can be measured through two-point scale. The test was found to be highly stable and reliable which was indicated by highly significant value of reliability co-efficient (0.78). The social science researchers can use this to measure knowledge of tribal farmers on seed banking. It can help the extension personnel to formulate sound strategy to exploit the strong areas of knowledge and develop the weak areas of knowledge of the farmers regarding seed banking.