Development and Standardization of Knowledge Test for Organic Waste Management

Majority of the organic waste in India is not disposed properly due to the lack of knowledge and an important resource gets wasted likewise. Therefore, a tool in the form of knowledge test was developed and standardized for measuring the knowledge of stakeholders regarding organic waste management. A total number of 102 items were collected in the form of open-ended and multiple choice questions which were served to 36 farmers for their response. Data were analyzed for calculating difficulty and discrimination index and 26 items falling between the difficulty index of 30 to 80 and discrimination index of 0.30 to 0.55 were selected for calculating reliability and validity. Split-half reliability was calculated using Spearman Brown Prophecy Formula and was found to be 0.927. The Cronbach’s Alpha was calculated to be 0.828 and was significant (p<0.05). Validity of the test was calculated using Aiken’s Coefficient (V Coefficient) for individual items, which was more than 0.80 for all the items (p<0.05). Therefore, the final knowledge test containing 26 items related to agricultural, household and livestock waste was standardized. The test can be used for assessing the knowledge gap of the stakeholders for organic waste management and suitable interventions can be made for enhancing the knowledge, thus converting the organic waste to wealth.