Attitudes of the District Agricultural Officers Towards Agricultural Technological Agencies

Abstract

The objectives of this study were : (1) to determine personal characteristics of district agricultural officers; (2) to determine attitudes of the officers in dealing with agricultural technological agencies; (3) to determine the relationship between attitude of the officers and various agricultural technological agencies: and (4) to determine the problems on technical coordination of the agencies. This investigation wad made using a mail questionnaire to collect data from 680 selected officers. The collection of data was done during Fabuary through March 1984. Four hundred and forty officers responded. The data were analyzed for various statistical measures to study differences opinions among the respondents. The results were as follows. The majority of district agricultural officers (D.A.O.) were between 37 to 47 years old, graduated three years of vocational education, official status level 5, and had been as D.A.O. for 1-9 years. The most significant and major activity where they cooperated with the sources of agricultural technology was to pass-on the basic information to the farmers in their respective areas. The minor activity they cooperated together was to communicate and bring the research work for use in extension work and least activity was to set up working group committees. The attitudes of D.A.O. towards the cooperation with agents and towards the subject matter specialist (SMS) in the province was positive but towards Kasetsart University (K.U.) and off-province were doubtful. Their attitudes towards research results were that they doubted such results, especialty whether the number of acceptable results were adequate and the most specifically whether those results had been concluded for their use in time. Towards the working process of the source of agricultural knowledge, D.A.O.’s attitudes were doubtful in all agents especially in providing resource persons, and follow up services. After testing the hypothesis it was found that there was no significant difference between D.A.O.’s attitudes and age, education, official status, length of service and being with the different agricultural regions. The D.A.O. recommended to increase the numbers of S.M.S. who had field workshop experience in the regions. They also suggested to have similar programmes for S.M.S. and D.A.O. once or twice a year. The K.U. was the biggest and the most reliable source of knowledge but it rarely had chance to contact because of distance problems. They suggested that K.U. should publish the research work and also use the mobile units. Suggestions given by the researcher directed forwards additional research and public relations activities of the research results should be undertaken in support to problem-solving of the district agricultural officers of the country.