The village Purbachandrapur of Purbachandrapur union of Dagon Bhuiyan upazila of Feni district was purposely selected as the locale of the study to determine the extent of opinion leadership among the farmers and to explore the relationships between selected characteristics of the farmers with their opinion leadership during July to December, 2007.
Population of the Study
In Purbachndrapur village there were 110 families. Out of these, 12 families were non-agricultural and 8 families were landless. Therefore, the number of total farm families was 90. Considering that the non-agricultural and landless families had no significant opinion leadership in agriculture, these were kept aside during data collection. Thus heads of 90 farm families constituted the sample population and respondent of the study.
Instrument for Collection of Data
Simple and direct question were included in the schedule to ascertain four characteristics of the farmers, namely, age, education, farm size and income. The schedule also contains five scales for measuring five characteristics namely, agriculture knowledge, extension contact, organizational participation, cosmopoliteness and innovativeness. Four socimetric questions were included in the schedule to determine the opinion leadership of the farmers. The interview schedule was pre-tested with 15 farmers of the study area.
Farm size
Each respondent was asked to mention the homestead area, the land under his own cultivation, own and given to others on borga (share cropping) system, land taken from others on borga system, land given to others on lease system, land taken from others on lease system, own pond, own garden and miscellaneous fallow land. The area was estimated in terms of full benefit to the growers or his family. The following formula was used in measuring the farm size:
Farm size = A1 + A2 + ½ ( A3+ A4 ) + A5 + A6 + A7 + A8
Where,
A1 = Homestead area
A2 = Own land under own cultivation
A3 = Own land given to others on borga system
A4 = Land taken from others on borga system
A5 = Land taken from others on lease system
A6 = Own pond
A7 = Own garden
A8 = Others
The unit of measurement was in hectare.
Annual income
Annual income refers to the total earnings in taka of the respondent and all family members of a farm family from agriculture, livestock, fisheries and other sources (service, business etc.) during the previous year.
Data Processing and Analysis
after completion of field survey, all the data were processed according to the objectives of the study.
Statistical Treatment
Data collected were compiled, coded, tabulated and analyzed in accordance with the objectives of the study. Qualitative data were quantified by means of suitable scoring techniques. The statistical measures such as range, mean, standard deviation, percentage distribution and rank order were used to describe both the independent and dependent variables.