Identifying and Analyzing the Effects of Implementing Rural Guide Plan in the Rural Regions of Osko County (Case study: Sarin Dizaj Village)

Rural guide plan is the main comprehensive plan for the development of the rural regions in Iran. Since 1987, more than 16440 plans have been designed and 7670 plans have been implemented in the Iranian rural regions. Despite passing over 20 years after initiating the rural guide plan in the country, the plan is still running in many rural regions, therefore, the study of the consequences and effects of the plan is very critical, because these studies provide the necessary data and information for the managers through a feedback process enabling them to take more effective decisions and choose better methods for the future plans and projects. In addition to this, the weaknesses and barriers of the plans will be clearly identified in order to conduct more efficient and appropriate solutions. In this respect, the main purpose of this study was to identify and analyze the effects of implementing the rural guide plan in Sarin Dizaj village in Osko County. The research method of the study was quantitative from view point of nature; non-experimental for the rate of variables control and field research for the method of data collection respectively. The statistical population of the study consisted of all heads of rural households in the village (N= 213). According to the Krejcie & Morgan table, a sample size of 130 was selected using a simple randomized sampling technique. Data was collected from face-to-face interviews with respondents based on a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was based on published literature on related topics in Iran and other countries. The questionnaire consisted of two parts including: respondents’ profiles (5 variables) and respondents’ viewpoints about the importance of the effects of implementing the rural guide plan (26 variables). A five-point Likert scale (from 1= very low to 5= very high) was used to measure the second part. The validity of the instrument was confirmed by a panel of experts in the field related to agriculturalextension and education. In order to test the reliability of the questionnaire, the validated version was sent to 25 villagers who had not been selected as samples for the study. The Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient for the main scale of the questionnaire was higher than 0.75 indicating that the research questionnaire was reliable. The collected data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSSwin18). In this research, descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. The descriptive statistics included frequency percentage and mean and inferential statistics employed the technique of exploratory factor analysis. The results of a factor analysisshowed that five factors namely, structural- physical (with 20.25 % of variance), social (with 19.63 % of variance), sanitary (with 14.42 % of variance), economic (with 10.63 % of variance) and environmental (with 4.86 % of variance) explained 69.79 % of total variances of the effects of implementing the rural guide plan in Sarin Dizaj village in which two factors including structuralphysical and social had the highest priority. According to findings, some practical suggestions have been presented for better management of the rural guide plan in the village.