Compiling and Validation of Sustainable Rural Areas Development Indicators

Development indices are the major criterion for putting goals, planning and evaluation of rural development projects. With using these criterions we can evaluate the extent of progress or impact of rural development plans or projects. The available gap in this content is the reason of compiling development plans far from suitable and exact indices and putting goal for plans and evaluations face with problems. So the main objective of this paper is formulating and validation of rural sustainable development indices. With compiling 112 indices in 3 dimensions of 1) social - structural (55 index), 2) economical (33 index) and 3) environmental (24 index), the indices were validated by 63 experts that were selected from academic experts and executive organization members. In order to meet expert's consensus and validate the indicators, statistical methods such as mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variation and Mann Whitney test were used. The results showed that, from 112 indices, 98 indices from expert's point of view are appropriate for rural planning purpose in Iran. From these indices, 45 indices were in social - structural dimension, 31 indices in economical dimension and 22 indices belong to environmental dimension of rural development.