Effectiveness of extension strategies for disseminating household water management practices
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Date
2023
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Punjab Agricultural University
Abstract
The polluted water and its crisis is the major issue that is worsening day by day. There is a need to create awareness among people through effective media. Thus, the present study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of extension strategies for disseminating information related to household water management practices. Total 200 rural women were selected from eight villages of Ludhiana district by snowball sampling technique. Action-cum-experimental research design was used in the study. Accordingly, one control and three experimental groups were formulated. Six major household water management practices i.e. procurement of drinking water, quality testing of water, water purification, safe storage of drinking water, cleaning of household water storage tank and use of water-saving gadgets were selected for purpose of the study. These practices were further comprised of 31 sub-practices. Three extension strategies were developed for dissemination of information on household water management practices. These extension strategies were, Strategy I: use of interpersonal methods (lecture, demonstration and discussion), Strategy II: use of multimedia through ICT platform (videos delivered through WhatsApp) and Strategy III: delivery of both interpersonal methods and multimedia through ICT platform (lecture, discussion and WhatsApp video messages). Effectiveness of these extension strategies was measured in terms of gain in knowledge and change in adoption status of respondents after exposure to intervention. Data were collected through personal contact with a self-structured interview schedule in two phases i.e. before intervention and after a gap of three months from the intervention. The results of the study showed that about 95 per cent the respondents from experimental and control group had a low level of existing knowledge on selected practices. All three strategies significantly changed the knowledge of respondents on these practices. However, after exposure through strategy I and strategy III, the knowledge of hundred per cent of the respondents from experimental group changed to high level. Since both the strategies included the use of interpersonal methods, thus it is suggested that personal contact methods, solely or in combination with ICT-based methods, should be used more for creating awareness and changing knowledge of people on different topics of concern. In case of adoption, the interpersonal extension strategy (strategy I) emerged to be the most effective in changing the adoption status of respondents. As live demonstrations in this strategy helped in increasing the adoption, they should be used more proactively in the trainings targeted towards the adoption of recommended practices/technologies. Socio-personal profile of the respondents was found to have no relationship with the gain in knowledge and change in adoption status of the respondents. Hence, it can be concluded that the change in respondents’ knowledge and adoption status was due to the intervention through different extension strategies.
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Loveleen Kaur (2023). Effectiveness of extension strategies for disseminating household water management practices (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation). Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab, India.