Durgapur, Garan ata and Bishramgaci villages o f Mohadipur Union of Palashbari Upazila under Gaibandha District in Bangladesh were selected as locale of this study. Randomly 116 (8% of 1453) farmers were selected from three villages for this study. A reserve list of 10 respondents was also prepared for covering the positions in case of the absence of the selected respondents during interview.
Selection of Dependent and Independent Variables: Age, education, family size, farm size, annual income, training exposure, organization participation, extension media contact and cosmopoliteness of respondents were selected as independent variables and adoption of improved rice cultivation practices was dependent variable.
Age: One score was assigned for each year of his/her age.
Education: One score was assigned for each completed year of schooling. If a respondent did not know reading and writing, his/her education score was assigned as zero (0). Respondent was scored 0.5 if he/she only could sign his/her name.
Family size: Assigned score one for each member of the family.
Farm size: Farm size was measured by using following formula
FS = A1 + A2 + ½ (A3 + A4) – A5 + A6 + A7 + A8
Where; FS = Farm size, A1 = Homestead land, A2 = Land under own cultivation, A3 = Land given to others on share cropping (borga), A4 = Land taken from others on share cropping (borga), A5 = Land given to others on lease, A6 = Land taken from others on lease, A7 = Pond and A8 = Garden
Annual income: Annual income was measured on the basis of total yearly earnings. Total yield from all sources in preceding year were converted into cash income (taka) according to prevailing market price and added together to obtain total income of a respondent.
Training exposure: Training exposure of a respondent was measured on the basis of number of days of training received on rice cultivation from different sources in the last five years. Score one was assigned for receiving one day training.
Organizational participation: In case of membership in two or more organizations, scores were computed by adding scores obtained for each organization according to the categories of his/her membership. Finally, organizational participation score was measured by summation of the scores obtained from all the selected organizations.