Performance Evaluation of Agricultural Extension Offices in Guilan's Agricultural Organization from Farmers and Experts Point of View

The main purpose of this study was performance evaluation of coordinating agricultural extension offices of Guilan’s Agricultural Organization (Jihad-e-Keshavrzi) based on the proposed model of Saravanan et al. (2009). This research was an applied research in terms of goal. This research also was a descriptive research in terms of the degree to control of variables and was a field research in term of data gathering. Statistical population consisted of all managers and experts of coordinating agricultural extension offices, Agricultural Organization (Jihad-e-Keshavrzi) service centers and other extension organizational experts (N=311), and also paddy farmers in the areas of Agricultural Organization (Jihad-e-Keshavrzi) management and service centers, Guilan Province who were selected by the multi-stage cluster sampling method. To perform sample size calculation, the minimum sample size table of Bartlett et al. (2001) has been use. Accordingly, the group of experts (n=183) and of farmers, 278 as sample were selected. The research instrument was a questionnaire which its face and content validity was assessed by a panel of experts. Reliability of the farmers and experts’ questionnaires was calculated on the basis of Cronbach's alpha coefficient test (α=0.85 and 0.97 respectively), therefore it can be concluded that the questionnaire had acceptable reliability to conduct the study. Data analysis was performed using the software SPSSwin18 and TOPSIS technique. Ranking results based on TOPSIS technique showed that Amlash County was in the first rank and Rasht County was in the last rank in comparison to other counties. This finding implies that the agricultural extension offices of Rasht must pay attention to the importance of performance indicators such as the total expenditure intensity, expenditure intensity, clientele contact intensity and technical manpower: cultivator ratio and in this regard particularly to the development, monitoring and evaluation standards and measures to improve the performance