Comparative analysis of effectiveness of EDP trainings of KVKs under different host agencies in Kerala

Introduction

Recent years have seen the emergence of Entrepreneurship development programmes (EDP) as a major extension intervention in income and employment generation in Agriculture and allied sectors. Entrepreneurship Development Programmes are mainly concerned with enabling a person in developing his/her entrepreneurial skills, motives and capabilities which are essential for playing his entrepreneurial role effectively. It is an effective technique for the development of human resources. It results in proper utilization of local resources, employment generation and promotion of small scale units and overall development of individuals (Masur, 2014) [4] . A lot of effort has been undertaken by both government and non-government organizations to promote entrepreneurial development in the country through Entrepreneurship Development Programmes (EDP). In this regard, many agencies and institutions are working towards organizing EDP. And one such institution is the Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), the first line transfer of technology (TOT) centres of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). As nodal agricultural resource centres at the district level, they have significant role in improving the farmers' income by facilitating entrepreneurship development. Keeping in view the need and importance of EDP trainings by KVKs, an assessment of effectiveness of Entrepreneurship Development Training Programmes assumes significant importance. Also in order to see if the EDP trainees are benefitted or not with the training and if any improvement is needed regarding the training output, teaching ability, teaching quality, topic coverage, facilities etc assessment of training is a must. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to assess of Entrepreneurship Development Training Effectiveness through the perception of KVK EDP Trainees and the findings of the study would be an important document which would be of practical use to the KVKs of Kerala in planning future EDP trainings.

Methodology

Kerala formed the locale of the study. The present study was conducted during 2019-20. Ex-post facto research design was employed. Out of the 14 KVKs working under different host organizations in Kerala viz. Kerala Agricultural University (KAU), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) a total of 5 KVKs (2 KAU KVKs, 2 ICAR KVKs and 1 NGO KVK) to represent southern, central and northern regions of the state were selected for the study. Purposive sampling was followed to select KVK, Kasaragod (ICAR) and KVK Malappuram (KAU) from northern region, KVK, Alappuzha (ICAR) and KVK, Kottayam (KAU) from central and KVK Trivandrum (NGO) from the southern region. Respondent selection followed a random sampling technique to select 20 EDP trainees from each of the selected KVKs to make a total sample of 100 trainees. The method followed by Senthilkumar (2014) [8] was adopted with suitable modifications to find out the effectiveness of training programmes through the perception of KVK trainees. The respondents were interviewed using the set of structured questions which comprised of statements and were placed on a 3 point continuum ranging from strongly agree/most adequate, agree/adequate and disagree/least adequate with scores of 2, 1 and 0 respectively. The trainees' preferences towards various aspects of training were asked and tabulated. For identifying individual effectiveness of the training aspects, the following formula was applied: TE= Where TE= Training effectiveness, , ,........ Referred to the total scores obtained by all the trainees on a particular dimension of items , , ..... Referred to the potential scores obtainable on each dimension included in the research study. In order to calculate the overall programme effectiveness the following formula was used.

OPE=

Where summation, + refers to the individual item effectiveness for all the items 1 to Z included in the programme. The Kruskal-Wallis nonparametric test was used to determine if there were statistically significant differences between the perceived training effectiveness scores of the trainees.

Results and Discussion

Table 1 showed that majority (47%) of the respondents belonged to the middle age group (36 to 50 years) and the participation of women in EDPs was higher (60.00%) compared to men which was only 40.00 per cent. The findings were in line with the results reported by Pandey (2017) [6] and Geethu (2019) [3] . Maximum distribution of respondents was found in the married category (88%) with only 12% in the unmarried group. A significant majority (90.00%) of the EDP trainees had nuclear family and majority of the trainees (57%) were having small size nuclear families of size four or less. The findings are supported by the results of Sinha (2016) [9] . 60 per cent of them had acquired high school level of education while 34.00 per cent of them possessed educational qualification up to college level. The results were in concurrence with the findings of Pandey (2017) [6] . 61 per cent had business as their primary occupation and was not involved in any farming while 35% of the respondents had business along with farming as their occupation. More than half (53.00%) of the EDP trainees had medium level of medium extension contact and about 54.00 per cent of the EDP trainees had medium exposure to mass media. This was in-line with the findings of Pandey (2017) [6] . With regard to economic variables, 72% of the KVK EDP trainees were marginal land holders with holding size less than 1.00 ha and major income group of 28.00 per cent had annual income more than three lakh rupees. More than half (58%) of the respondents were medium in their innovativeness, about half (51%) were found to have medium level of achievement motivation, 49% had medium decision making ability scores, 51% had medium level of risk orientation, 59 per cent of the respondents had medium level of selfconfidence, 64% had medium level of cosmopoliteness and majority of the respondents (56%) had medium level of economic motivation. The trainees' perception about the KVK EDP training were asked based on a three-point continuum scale on these four dimensions and the responses so obtained are presented in table 2 to 5.

Evaluation of EDP training effectiveness based on training output

A perusal of results in Table 2 shows that with regard to training output, the training effectiveness scores (TES) ranged from 70 to 89 per cent, which shows that the training output was perceived as very much effective by the respondents. It could be inferred from the results that the KVKs were effective in providing need based trainings that enabled the trainees to start entrepreneurship. The respondents felt that KVKs, to be more effective need to focus more on disseminating new technologies that helped the trainees increase their knowledge that resulted in quality output from the enterprises. The trainings from KVK also helped the respondents to know about different agencies involved with entrepreneurship development. The results are on par with the findings of Dubey et al. (2007) [1] and Devi et al. (2016) [2] . www.extensionjournal.com

Evaluation of EDP training effectiveness based on teaching quality

The findings depicted in Table 3 showed that with respect to teaching quality, the training effectiveness scores (TES) for individual aspects indicating the relative effectiveness ranged from 70 to 91.5 per cent. The respondents felt that more number of subject matter specialists may be needed in the KVKs. This was in-line with the findings of Senthilkumar (2014) [8] . The respondents perceived that the KVK staffs mingled freely with trainees and taught in simple manner. It can be inferred that Subject matter specialists are not adequate for teaching about EDP in the KVKs. These finding were supported by the findings of Dubey et al. (2007) [1] and Sarma et al. (2013) [7] .

Evaluation of EDP training effectiveness based on availability of physical facilities

The average training effectiveness scores (76) for the physical facilities were assessed in terms of transportation and lodge facilities. The total effectiveness score under physical facilities ranged from 55 to 92 per cent (Table 4).

The effectiveness with regard to the lecture hall and audiovisual aids were perceived as high by the respondents.

However, the transport and lodging facilities provided during training programme were not satisfactory. Effective use of transport and lodging facilities might further increase the effectiveness of the training. This was supported by the findings of Devi et al. (2016) [2] who reported that effective transport facilities by KVKs might increase the training effectiveness.

Evaluation of EDP training effectiveness based on training content

It could be observed from Table 5 that with respect to the coverage of topics, the total effectiveness scores ranged from 64 to 94.5. In the coverage of topics, the lowest effectiveness score was for topics like Entrepreneurial motivation, business opportunities and guidance, Marketing management and Knowledge on subsidies, government schemes, support agencies and other linkages. Therefore, to improve the effectiveness of training, the KVKs must stress more on these topics. Hence, reorientation of the syllabus according to the need expressed by the trainees would increase the effectiveness. This was in line with the findings of Dubey et al. (2007) [1] . www.extensionjournal.com

Perceived overall effectiveness of EDP training of KVKs

It can be observed from the Table 6 that out of the four dimensions taken, the total effectiveness score for the factor of perceived teaching quality was 81.75, followed by training output (80), coverage of topics (79.62) and physical facilities (76). Further, it could be observed that the overall training effectiveness score of the EDP training programmes was worked out to be 79.45. The results revealed that the trainees of the KVKs were satisfied with the training output, quality of teaching and coverage of topics. However, the trainees perceived that the physical facilities provided by the KVKs were not sufficient.

Comparison of perceived effectiveness scores of KVK EDPs

Non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis H test was used to determine whether any difference lies between the selected KVKs regarding the perceived training effectiveness scores of their respondents. Kruskal-Wallis test statistics presented in Table 7 showed that there was no significant difference between the EDP effectiveness of selected KVKs.

Correlation between personal traits of trainees and their training effectiveness

In order to ascertain the relationship between the selected independent variables and the training effectiveness correlation coefficient was used and the findings are presented in Table 9. The 'r' values indicated significant correlation of training effectiveness with all selected variables except marital status, family type and family size. There was significant and positive relation between the variables educational status, land holding, annual income, extension contact, mass media exposure, innovativeness, achievement motivation, decision making ability, risk orientation, self-confidence, cosmopoliteness, economic motivation and training effectiveness at 5% level of significance. Age also recorded positive correlation with training effectiveness but at 10% significance level. These findings were found supported with findings of Devi et al. (2016) [2] . Though gender and occupational status had significant correlation the direction of relation was negative. www.extensionjournal.com

Conclusion

The effectiveness of EDP trainings quantified using Training Effectiveness Score (TES) showed that the KVK EDP trainees perceived that the training output, quality of teaching and coverage of topics were effective. However, the physical facilities provided by the KVKs were perceived as not sufficient. This was in line with the findings of Tyagi and Tyagi (2014) [10] . The total effectiveness score under physical facilities ranged from 55 to 92 per cent. The transport and lodging facilities provided during training programme were not satisfactory. The overall training effectiveness score of the EDP training programmes was worked out to be 79.45. Kruskal-Wallis test performed to compare the perceived effectiveness scores of EDP trainings showed that there was no significant difference among the KVKs in training effectiveness. Independent variables like age, educational status, land holding, annual income, extension contact, mass media exposure, innovativeness, achievement motivation, decision making ability, risk orientation, self-confidence, cosmopoliteness and economic motivation had a positive and significant correlation with training effectiveness. Though considerable efforts are taken in the training, there still remains a lacuna which needs to be filled and the KVKs must re-orient their trainings to improve their effectiveness. This was in line with the findings of Medhi (2017) [5] .

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