Effectiveness of Modes of Radio Broadcasting in Gain and Retention of Knowledge About Child Care Message

Abstract

India is dominantly a country of villages. There is a great necessity for transmitting latest scientific knowledge about agriculture and related fields among the farming communities. Today we have many problems- high rate of illiteracy, accelerating population growth which eats into any gain that educational expansion may bring, increasing pressures on admissions at all stages, explosion in knowledge necessitating change and review of curricula and teaching method, urban – rural imbalance, wastage in education need for raising standards and the criterion of an environment favourable to social change and capable of softening its harsher incidences. The mass media are supremly adapted to adult education. Radio is the transmission and reception of signals by means of electric waves without the use of connection wires. Therefore, this study was undertaken with a view to find out relative effectiveness of three mode of presentation.

Introduction

I. INTRODUCTION

Radio is a powerful medium of communication that can reach large audiences. It is one of our most potent methods of mass communication. It can also provide real time information, including local news, weather information and updates and emergency broadcasts. Radio has ability to reach across borders and can become a valuable source of information.

In the short period of 65 years, Radio has grown a gadget in Marconi’s workshop to a permanent fixtures in American home.

Radio is a powerful, almost universal medium to carry audio stimuli. There is quite an expanded radio network in India but its focus is more on entertainment and information than instruction. Educational Radio pogrammes are little utilized in our country.

Radio is a very powerful auditory medium which can evoke imagination. A variety of subjects demanding audio stimuli can be radio mediated through a suitable format such as illustrated talk, drama, feature, dialogue, discussion, question, answer, quiz, interviews, etc. right from infants through aged.

Radio broadcasts were started in India at Madras by the Madras Presidency Radio Club on July 31, 1924. Indian broadcasting company started radio broadcast from Bombay in 1927. Broadcasting was then taken over by the government of India and operated in the name of Indian State Broadcasting service since July 8, 1936 it is known as All India Radio.

There is one drawback that the village women has no knowledge about these programmes. The child care message suffered whenever the media was found ineffective .

Moreover, the contribution of mass media is dissemination of innovations cannot overlooked in the transfer of child care techniques among the large rural population.

Although there are many communication sources for this purpose but only Radio as a mass media was especially choosen to assess effectiveness of rural women in gain and retention of child care message. Programmes like Vakt Ki Awaaz, Mann Ki Baat, are being broadcasted for the purpose of imparting knowledge and training to the village women in respect of adoptions of improved packages of practices.

The number of programmes directly promoting family welfare broadcast by All India Radio. A number of modes are being adopted to broadcast educational programmes on All India Radio. The modes like straight talk, dialogue, question answer, drama, interview, discussion are largely used to present the scientific and useful messages to the people very little information is available about effectiveness of different modes of presentation on All India Radio especially for rural women. Therefore, this study was undertaken with a view to find out relative effectiveness of three mode of presentation namely straight talk, drama, and discussion in gain and retention of knowledge about child care message among rural women.

II. OBJECTIVES

1. To study the profile of child care listeners.
2. To determine the preferred time and devation of listening and broadcasting of child care message.

III. AREA OF  RESEARCH

Kanpur Dehat district was purposively chosen as locale for the present investigation. The study was confined to the All India Radio, Lucknow listening zone. A group of the villages was selected for the present investigation from block Chaubepur. These villages were Maryani, Barry and Ameliha.

From the each village 30 to 40 women in age group and possessing radio sets were selected on the basis of their availability and willingness to participate in the investigation.

Poor health and poor nutrition are the burning problem among the children and women in our country. On the basis of these problems selection of modes of message that is staright talk, drama and discussion were selected as there is a lot of difference in these modes which may cause variation in gain and retention of knowledge.

IV. FIELD PROCEDURE AND STASTICAL TECHNIQUES

Simple and comprehensive structured schedules & questionnaires were prepared to collect the information from the respondents to cover various aspects of the study.

Expost facto research design was used. Each of three groups were exposed to selected child care message through one of the three modes with the help of pre-recorded programme. Knowledge test was administered before and after exposure to determine the gain in knowledge retention was found after 15 days by using same knowledge test. For measuring the socio-economic status of the respondents, socio-economic status scale was used developed by G.Trivedi with partial essential modification.

Field Procedure-

All the 100 village women were personally interviewed with the help of prepared and pretested schedules and questionnaires.

Socio-economic background of selected child care message listeners –

The distribution of listeners on the basis of caste, education and socio-economic status, etc.

Table 1 Classification of the respondents on the basis of caste-                                      N=100

Table -1 shows that majority (52%) of the child care message listeners belonged to backward caste (28%) belonged to high caste rest (20%) belonged to scheduled caste category. It can be concluded on the basis of above analysis that majority of the child care message listeners i.e. (52%) belonged to backward category who received information about child care message for child development.

Table 2 Classification of the respondents on the basis of socio-economic status                                        N=100

The distribution of the child care message listeners into various categories of socio-economic status in respect of sample population is presented in Table- 2. The score ranged from a low of 13 to maximum of 52. The results indicates that the highest majority of the child care message programme listeners i.e. 42% , 31% , and 15% were from the medium, super medium and higher socio-economic status respectively. Only 9% listeners were from the lower medium status. Remaining 3% were from the lower socio-economic status.

An eyeview over the table shows that about three fourth majority of the child care message listeners belonged to lower medium to higher level of socio-economic status, whereas about one fourth listeners belonged to lower medium to lower class in terms of socio-economic status.

In order to find out the suitable time for broadcasting respondents were asked to indicate their most suitable time for broadcasting in terms of months i.e. January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, & December. The listeners opinion was recorded about the degree of suitability of each months for listening in terms of four important categories i.e. most suitable, suitable, moderately suitable, less suitable & unsuitable. These responses were assigned with the score no. 4, 3, 2, and 1 respectively. Based on the scores assigned to the various categories of responses. The opinion of the respondents regarding the suitability of timing for broadcasting as per result depicted the month of January, February, March and April were found most suitable for broadcasting of child care message to the listeners.

Conclusion

The present research entitled “Effectiveness of Modes of Radio broadcasting in gain and Retention of Knowledge about child care message” has been carried out with and overall to assist the extension worker, government & other institutions relating to broadcasting of child care message to the rural mothers for improvement of children health. Majority of rural mothers i.e. 52% belonged to the backward caste category who received the message about child care. Majority i.e. 61% and 56% rural mother belonged to the category of good level of knowledge about child care message after exposure of drama , discussion and straight talk respectively. 41%, 25%, & 30% rural mother were having medium to high level of retention about child care message after exposure of drama, straight talk and discussion respectively. Drama is the best mode of exposure in my investigation.

References

[1] Akhouri M. (1973) Communication behavior of extension personnel analysis of Haryana Agriculture Extension System. Unpublished Ph.D thesis I.A.R.I New Delhi. [2] Ambastha C.K and Singh K.N (1977) Communication Pattern of Farm Scientist- A system analysis . Indian journal of Extension Education. Vol. XIII No. 1 and 2nd June- 1977. [3] Bharadwaj N.2 Hansa B.S (1983) Effectiveness of some selected modes of communication in imparting knowledge to the members of ladies charcha Mandals of Ludhiyana district Indian journal of extension education Vol. XIX Nos. 1 & 2 June , 1983.

Copyright

Copyright © 2024 Dr. Jaya Verma. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.