Abstract:
The key concern of this study was to explore the extent of handheld
communication media use by the farmers. Three unions of Nilphamari upazila
under Nilphamari district were randomly selected as the locale of the study.
117 farmers were selected as the sample for this study. Data for this study were
collected through personal interview by the researcher herself during July 31 to
August 31, 2019. Dara were analyzed by Multiple Regression Analysis using
SPSS 23.0. Age, Education, ICT experience, ICT ownership, ICT self-efficacy,
perceived usefulness were the selected variables for the study. An
overwhelming majority (45.30%) of the respondents was middle aged, 49.3%
of the respondents had secondary education. Among the farmers, 80
respondents had self-access to feature phone and 69 respondents had selfaccess
to
smart
phone.
Around
half
of
the
respondents
(49.57%)
had
full
access
to
the
Internet
while
one-fifth
of
the
respondents
(22.22%)
had
no
access
to
the
Internet.
Furthermore, 95.73% farmers used mobile phone on daily basis.
Considering the inferential statistics, age, education, ICT ownership and
perceived usefulness had positive and significant contribution to the extent of
handheld communication media use which constitutes 68.7% (R
= 0.687) of
the variance. This study also noticed that respondents’ handheld
communication device use experience and self-efficacy had also positive
contribution (at 10% level of significance). Thus, the study concludes with the
recommendation to enable favorable environment to promote handheld
communication devices in receiving agricultural information.
Description:
A Thesis
Submitted to the faculty of Agriculture,
Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka
In partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree
of
MASTER OF SCIENCE
IN
AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION AND INFORMATION SYSTEM
