Analysis of Factors Affecting Success of Faculty Members of Iranian Agricultural Colleges in Outreach Services Delivery

As a descriptive, this paper aims to analyze factors affecting success of faculty members of Iranian agricultural colleges in outreach services delivery. Using proportional stratified random sampling technique, 140 lecturers out of 1799 were selected from ten Iranian agricultural colleges. As a descriptive-correlation research, lecturers were asked to fill in a questionnaire which was validated by a panel of faculty members of the Department of Agricultural Extension and Education in University of Tehran. Its reliability also was examined by Cronbach Alpha coefficients and estimated 0.79 and 0.82. Results of ranking of factors affecting success of faculty members, showed that top two most important factors (in order of importance) were "existence of appropriate occupational and professional competences" and "having required research skills to identify target group, target regions, and networks". Also results of exploratory factor analysis revealed that three factors determined about 60.2 percent of variations in the factor affecting success of faculty members in outreach services delivery: occupational, communication- psychology and organizational- managerial factors. Due to being non favorable situation with regard to university outreach services in Iranian agricultural higher education system, identifying these factors and paying critical attention to them can resolve many problems of this system and reinforce mutual linkage between university and various sectors of the community.