National fsa training Module 18: Impact assessment studies
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Adoption processesStudies have clearly demonstrated the extensive delays that often occur between the time farmers first hear about favourable innovations and the time they adopt them. It takes often years (and sometimes decades) for the majority of farmers to adopt recommended practices. Research workers have naturally been keen to find out what happens during this time. The following stages are often used to analyse the diffusion process:
In practice decisions may often be made in a much less rational and systematic manner than is outlined here. In the latest edition of his book Diffusion of Innovations, Rogers proposes a different set of stages:
He indicates there is clear evidence that the “knowledge’ and ‘decision’ stages exist, but evidence for the other stages is much less clear. Perhaps persuasion and implementation can happen at different moments in the adoption process. Persuasion can occur after the decision to adopt, which is sometimes taken without careful consideration of the possible consequences. Implementation, which is a serious consideration of how the farmer will change his farm management by adopting this innovation, can take place partly before the decision is taken. Implementation often implies that the innovation is modified to suit more closely the needs of the farmer who adopts it. People often gather additional information after they have adopted an innovation to confirm they have made the right decision. Another important difference between the old and new set of stages is that explicit attention is now given to the possibility of the innovation being rejected. This may be a conscious decision, although it is also possible that the farmer paid little serious attention to the innovation when he gained some knowledge about it. In short the idea that a change in information is followed by a change of attitude, and that this in turn is followed by change in behaviour, is no longer accepted as the usual pattern. This also made it necessary to abandon the idea of stages in the adoption process. The implementation of innovations has received more attention in recent years. After a farmer has decided to adopt a new technology (for instance a new crop), the implementation of this decision requires considerable additional learning and decision-making on how to grow this crop most effectively. In this and in many other cases, we are not dealing with the adoption of one innovation, but with a whole package of innovations. Often innovations have to be adapted to the specific situation in which they will be used. Extension research has shown that different sources of information are important for first hearing about an innovation and for making the final decision to adopt or reject it. The research findings show that people in less industrialised countries, more than in industrial counties, become aware of innovations by talking to friends, neighbours and extension agents. This may be attributed in part to different cultures and social structures, and in part to higher levels of illiteracy and few outlets for print media in rural areas of less industrialised countries. Radio also plays a more important role in developing countries. However, both in industrial and less industrialised societies potential users make their decision to try or adopt innovations following personal discussions with people they know and trust. Hence the extension agent plays a very important role, both North and South. Frequency and cumulative curves for an adopter distribution (Rogers, 1983: 243) Adopter categoriesIt is understandable that not everyone adopts innovations at the same rate. Some people accept new ideas years before others. If we plot the percentage of people who adopt innovations against time we normally get an S-curve, as shown in the figure above. Both curves in the figure are based on the same data. The bell-shaped curve shows the percentage of group members who adopt innovations in a certain year. The S-shaped curve shows the total percentage of those who have adopted the innovation at any one point in time. The combined results of many studies suggest that the bell-shaped curve usually has a nearly normal distribution. Differences between people who readily adopt innovations and those who play a waiting game are interesting topic for investigation. Many of these investigations combine a sample of several innovations into an ‘adoption index’, rather than studying a single innovation. Innovations commonly studied often relate to economic growth and are based on scientific research. For example, agricultural methods that increase yield per hectare or per person. The adoption index is usually calculated by asking people if they have adopted any of ten to fifteen innovations recommended by the local extension service. They receive a point for each one adopted. A difficulty here is that there are often very good reasons why a person cannot adopt a certain innovation. The use of a particular machine on large farms may indicate how modern a farmer is. However, use of this machine by small farmers may be an indication that they have not worked out very carefully how profitable the machine is for them. Hence, if an adoption index is used, it should be based on the percentage of innovations adopted that are applicable to given situation. People are often divided into five categories according to their scores on an adoption index. These are (in per cent): 1. Innovators 2.5 2. Early adopters 13.5 3. Early majority 34.0 4. Late majority 34.0 5. Laggards 16.0 These percentages serve mainly to make findings from different studies comparable by using a uniform classification. It is more important for extension agents that a minority of farmers are either early adopters or laggards, and a minority of the early adopters are innovators. Classification of people in these different adopter categories by definition depends on the degree to which the whole group has adopted the innovations, and on the distribution of adoption over time being normal. Borderlines between categories for this classification are drawn at one or two standard deviations (Q) from the mean, as is shown in the following figure: Adopter categories (Rogers, 1983: 247) Many research workers have investigated the relationship between an individual’s adoption index and a variety of his social characteristics. Variables that are related to the adoption index have been investigated in many different countries. Remarkably similar results have been found, not only in agriculture but also in health and education. Percentage of studies showing positive relationship between adoption index and other variables (Rogers 1983: 260-61)
For a long time we thought that people adopted innovations only very slowly because of their traditional or conservative attitude towards life. We call this the ‘individual-blame’ hypothesis. More recent research has focused attention on the ‘system-blame’ hypothesis, which states that it is not sensible for farmers to adopt ideas in their present situation. Either they do not have sufficient resources, or the power relationships in the society are such that others profit from these innovations rather than the farmers themselves. It is also possible that innovations are not available in remote villages or are sold only in much larger quantities than a small farmer can use and afford. The reason that a small farmer does not use fertilisers might not be his traditional attitude towards this innovation (= individual-blame), but the fact that he has to borrow money for it at a high interest rate, that he gets only a small return when he sells the addition crop because he is in dept to the merchant, that fertilisers are not sold in his village and/or that he cannot afford the risk that he might not get any yield increase by applying fertiliser in a dry year (= system-blame). It does not seem sensible to us to state that either the ‘individual-blame’ or ‘system-blame’ hypothesis is correct. Each concrete case should be tested with both hypotheses. Both hypotheses can contribute to clarifying reality, despite the fact that the accent will lie more with one than the other. We must realise that the correlation between adoption of innovations and income or capital is much lower than one. There are some poor farmers who adopt innovations rapidly. We often encounter this situation when surveying farmers in one community at one point in time, and even more commonly when studying farmers during a generation. Some farm families who used to be poor have managed to become rich. There will be many more in a rapidly changing society where many new opportunities open than in a traditional society with a rigid social structure. Directory: sed sed -> Tourist Areas Haiti, another discovery sed -> Headmaster’s Prize Giving Speech Summer Term 2015 sed -> Early searches for new physics with the atlas detector E. V. Sedykh sed -> Audition pack sed -> Lovers: Birth of Lilith sed -> Wakko’S 50 state capitals (lyrics) sed -> Acknowledgements sed -> Using Well Logs in the Petroleum Industry Download 236.26 Kb. Share with your friends:
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