Construction of Knowledge Test to Assess the Knowledge Level of Tribal Women Regarding Post-Harvest Management of Millets in Odisha, India

Abstract

This study aimed to develop and standardise a knowledge test for assessing knowledge level of tribal women regarding post-harvest management of millets in Odisha. A pool of 58 items was prepared after reviewing relevant literature and consulting subject matter experts. The items covered major dimensions of post-harvest management including processing, storage, post-harvest technologies, value addition and entrepreneurship. Relevancy rating by experts was used to screen the items and 34 items were retained for item analysis. These items were administered to 60 non-sampled tribal women from Madanpur Rampur block of Kalahandi district, Odisha. Responses were scored dichotomously and analysed using item difficulty index, item discrimination index and point-biserial correlation coefficient. Based on the prescribed criteria, 25 items were selected for the final knowledge test. The selected items represented key areas of post-harvest management of millets including primary processing, storage, nutrition, value addition and enterprise-related practices. The reliability of the final instrument was assessed using the split-half method. The correlation coefficient was 0.771 while the Spearman-Brown coefficient was 0.870 for equal-length halves and 0.871 for unequal-length halves. The results indicate that the developed test is suitable for assessing the knowledge level of tribal women regarding post-harvest management of millets and can support the identification of knowledge gaps for training and extension purposes.