Measuring perception on multimedia-based agro-advisory: A scale construction

Access to information and effective delivery can be improved by using multimedia as a tool for advisory services. Various factors contribute to the development of an effective multimedia-based agro-advisory model. Stakeholders’ perception plays a major role to design and validate it properly. To measure stakeholders’ perception towards multimedia-based agro-advsiory (Pusa Samachar), a multi-dimensional perception scale was developed using Polychoric Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The data pertaining to this study were collected from 150 farmers using Google forms in 2021 and from 225 farmers in 2022. These farmers were sampled using stratified two-stage sampling from five districts each from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab states. The majority of the farmers (68.6%) reported watching full weekly episode of agro-advisory telecasted as Pusa Samachar. Notably, farmers of Uttar Pradesh (54.67%) and Haryana (60.0%) showed affirmative perception; while Punjab (50.83%) had neutral perception towards Pusa Samachar model. Analysis of average perception score of farmers revealed that technical factor ranked I followed by linguistic factor (II), content and design factor (III) and timeliness factor (IV). Audio-visual quality, graphics, time duration of content, language, accent, and style of presentation with quality content could be considered as prime parameters for developing multimedia-based content. Location-specific, farmers’ centric language-based, and farmer participatory multimedia-based content should be created for better information availability and acceptance among farming community.