DEVELOPMENT OF A SCALE TO MEASURE THE IMPORTANCE OF APPROPRIATE SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES TO PERFORM AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION WORK/JOB EFFICIENTLY

M. SHIVAMURTHY¹, A. MADHUSHREE²*
¹ICAR-Emeritus Scientist Project, Department of Agricultural Extension, College of Agriculture, University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bengaluru, 560065, India
²ICAR-Emeritus Scientist Project, Department of Agricultural Extension, College of Agriculture, University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bengaluru, 560065, India
* Corresponding Author : madhushree819@gmail.com

Received : 09-07-2022     Accepted : 28-07-2022     Published : 30-07-2022
Volume : 14     Issue : 7       Pages : 11540 - 11543
Int J Agr Sci 14.7 (2022):11540-11543

Keywords : Extension Education, Extension services, Extension Personnel, Competencies, Skills, Reliability and Validity
Academic Editor : Saket Kumar, Dr Gowher Gull Sheikh, Dr Brijesh Kumar
Conflict of Interest : None declared
Acknowledgements/Funding : Authors are thankful to ICAR-Emeritus Scientist Project, Department of Agricultural Extension, College of Agriculture, University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bengaluru, 560065, India
Author Contribution : All authors equally contributed

Present agricultural extension has become as an essential tool for delivering information and advice modem/ improved farming in order to meet the global and national demand. Understanding local culture, group dynamics, social power relations, gender roles, communication patterns and human motivations are essential skills. Therefore, to be effective, an extension educator must integrate technical skills with human-how skills (also referred to as soft skills or process skills). Hence extension services need to be strengthened and agents are to be provided with the necessary equipment’s and logistics so that they can reach farmers more easily with agricultural technologies. A scale has been developed to analyze the importance of skills and competencies required to perform agricultural extension work/job effectively. The main purpose of this study is to find out competencies that help to explain extension workers’ job performances. Items/statements having relevancy percentage of more than 75 per cent with relevancy weightage of 0.75 were considered for the final selection. By this process, 75 statements were retained after relevancy test and these statements were suitably modified and finalized. To improve the performance of extension workers competencies must be the most important aspect of the agricultural education system and SAUs should include the identified skills in the curriculum of the extension education

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