Delivering too much, too little or off target—possible consequences of differences in perceptions on agricultural advisory services

Table 4 Advisors’ perceptions on farmers’ motives^a versus farmers’ descriptions of their motives^a for not choosing advisory services sorted in descending order based on t ratio for discrepancies between the two groups; boxplots with medians and quartiles illustrate the distribution of responses)

Statement	Group	N	Mean	SD	t ratio	p-value
Lack of appealing choices	Advisor	219	5.3	1.1	14.2	< 0.001
Lack of appealing choices	Farmer	402	3.7	1.6	14.2	< 0.001
Previous bad experience	Advisor	219	5.0	1.5	10.5	< 0.001
Previous bad experience	Farmer	399	3.7	1.6	10.5	< 0.001
Don´t know who to turn to	Advisor	219	4.7	1.4	9.1	< 0.001
Don´t know who to turn to	Farmer	391	3.5	1.7	9.1	< 0.001
Too expensive	Advisor	219	5.7	1.1	7.4	< 0.001
Too expensive	Farmer	420	4.9	1.6	7.4	< 0.001
Advisors have limited knowledge	Advisor	219	4.1	1.3	0.2	0.861
Advisors have limited knowledge	Farmer	410	4.1	1.5	0.2	0.861

^aAdvisors were asked why they thought farmers chose not to use advisory services, while farmers were asked why they chose not to use advisory services