ABSTRACT
Purpose
This article aims at designing and validating a psychometric scale to assess extensionists’ and advisors’ beliefs about extension and innovation.
Design/Methodology/approach
The scale was developed by drawing upon results from a previous empirical research as well as insights from a literature review on extension and innovation approaches. The theoretical framework used to write the items was validated by 12 international experts from 11 countries. 608 Argentine extension workers completed the questionnaire. Replies were analysed using Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis.
Findings
The scale has a good fit and satisfactory level of internal consistency. Five factors were identified: Dialogue and horizontal coordination; Transfer of technology; Blame on farmers; Participatory, farmer-led extension; and Self-critical attitude.
Practical implications
The scale has multiple and different uses, including research, theory development, institutional practice, diagnosis, and teaching.
Theoretical implications
Results show that a horizontal, facilitative extension approach shares a common epistemology, as well as underlying values and assumptions, with territorial development and with an innovation systems perspective, and that both contrast with a traditional transfer of technology approach. Nonetheless, practitioners would not tend to see these two contrasting perspectives as contradictory but as complementary.
Originality/Value
The scale is the first validated psychometric instrument, based on an ample theoretical framework, that allows for a quantitative assessment of beliefs about extension and innovation.
Acknowledgments
The authors thanks the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS) and the Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (Argentina) for supporting this research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Fernando Landini holds a master's degree in Rural Development and has a Ph.D. in Psychology. He serves as associate professor in the University of La Cuenca del Plata in the area of psychology and is Senior Researcher of the National Council of Scientific and Technological Research (Argentina). His main area of intereset is rural extension, innovation and psychosocial processes.
Maite Beramendi has a Ph.D. in Psychology. She serves as assistant professor in the School of Psychology of the University of Buenos Aires. She studies social norms and is an expert in quantitative research methodologies.
ORCID
Fernando Landini http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5322-2921