Construction and Standardization of Knowledge Test to Measure the Knowledge Level of Maize Growers on Maize Production Technologies

Knowledge is one of the important components of behaviour as such it plays an important role in the covert and overt behaviour of an individual. To measure the knowledge level of maize growers of Jammu division of J&K state about recommended maize cultivation practices, a knowledge test has been developed that cover process objective of recall and recognition with content area of maize cultivation practices. A preliminary test of fifty three (53) items was initially administered to twenty four (24) maize growers. Difficulty and discrimination indices of test items were calculated. Only few items were discarded to ensure content validity of the test. All process objectives are represented in the standardized test. Difficulty index was used for arranging the test items in increasing order of difficulty to ensure the split of the test into two parallel halves. The reliability of the knowledge test was measured with the help of split-half method and found to be 0.72. The reliability coefficient of the total test was worked out by using Spearman-Brown prophecy formula and found to be 0.84, which indicates that knowledge test is quite reliable. Moreover, the intrinsic validity of the knowledge test was found to be 0.91, which proves that test is valid for measuring the knowledge of maize growers. The final test was consisted of forty four (44) test items which contains four (4) objective type, two (2) close ended, five (5) identification of objects from photographs and thirty three (33) open response items.