Development of a Scale to Measure Group Dynamics Effectiveness (GDE) of FPO Members

Abstract

FPOs are non-profi t groups run by the farmers who actively engage in deciding on policies and setting priorities for the organization. They do not discriminate on the basis of gender, socioeconomic class, race, political affi liation, or religion and are open to anybody who can use their services and is ready to accept the obligations of membership. To measure the group dynamics eff ectiveness among members of FPOs, an index was developed with Likert’s summated rating technique during 2021-2022. A list of 108 items under 13 indicators regarding group dynamics eff ectiveness were sent to 120 experts for their relevancy using google forms and personal follow up. Based on 40 experts’ responses, the Relevancy Percentage (RP), Relevancy Weightage (RW) and Mean Relevancy Scores (MRS) were estimated. Sixty-one items with RP > 70, RW > 0.70 and overall MRS > 2.3 were considered for item analysis regarding group dynamics eff ectiveness. These items were administrated to 40 farmers. Based on t-value (>1.75) resulting from item analysis, 53 items were fi nally retained under 11 indicators in the group dynamics eff ectiveness index. The Cronbach’s alpha value was found to be 0.98 which showed high reliability. The validity and reliability measures of the index indicated the precision and consistency.

Critical Analysis of Group Dynamics Effectiveness of Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) Members in Assam, India

“…It is the internal nature of the group as to how they are formed, what their structures and processes are, how they function and affect individual members, other groups and the organization (Van and Schaller) [3]. While the group dynamics effectiveness (GDE) has been operationally defined as the sum total of forces among the members of group based on certain subdimensions (Falguni et al) [4].The small and marginal farmers (SMFs) face challenges both in production and post production stages like access to production technology, quality inputs at reasonable prices, credit, custom hiring, seed production, value addition, processing, investments and most importantly market access. Collectivization of such small and marginal farmers to form their organizations as Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) has been recognized as the most effective and appropriate institutional mechanism to reduce cost of production, increase per unit productivity and facilitate better market linkages so as to enhance their net income.…”