International Journal of Agriculture Extension and Social Development

author(s)
N Vimalrajkumar and NV Kavithaa

abstract
Livestock plays a pivotal role in the economic development of farmers, yet many buffalo farmers often lack awareness and knowledge regarding scientific management practices. Enhancing the cognitive standard of buffalo farmers necessitates an evaluation of their current level of knowledge on modern and scientific buffalo farming techniques in order to make them to adopt modern scientific methods and technologies in buffalo farming. With this goal, the present study aimed at the construction of a standardized knowledge test to assess the knowledge level of buffalo farmers regarding scientific buffalo farming practices. The current study endeavored to create a knowledge test aimed at assessing the knowledge level of buffalo farmers regarding various facets of buffalo farming in Tamil Nadu. Two blocks namely, Karamadai and Anamalai from Coimbatore district were purposively selected for the present study. The steps involved in development of knowledge test are selection of knowledge items thereby formation of universe of items, relevancy rating, item analysis to find out the item difficulty and discrimination indexes, running point bi-serial correlation, final selection of items and establishment of reliability and validity were followed to develop and standardize the test. A total of 75 items or questions were framed on Breeds and selection of animals, Breeding management, Feeding management, Health care management and General management. The knowledge items with a difficulty index between 0.30 and 0.70, a discrimination index above 0.30, and a point-bi serial correlation significant at the 5% level were selected for the final knowledge test. As a result, a total of 40 items out of the initial 75 were retained for the final knowledge test. The reliability coefficient value of 0.84 indicated that the test was highly significant. The study would be useful for researchers, academicians and policy makers to measure knowledge level of buffalo farmers before configuring capacity development programs or constructing development plans for buffalo farmers so as to make them a need based one.