The Effectiveness of Agricultural Business Education on Rural Women Entrepreneurship

Since rural women have fewer opportunities to grow and develop entrepreneurship due to existing constraints, this study investigated the effectiveness of agricultural education programs for rural women in creating entrepreneurship among rural women in 1996-95. The purpose of this study is applied, in terms of field data collection method and in terms of quasi-experimental variables control using questionnaire. The population of the study was 970 rural women members of rural women cooperatives in Alborz province who had previous training and extension courses related to employment and agricultural business. Using Cochran formula, 135 of them were identified and 140 individuals were selected by quota sampling to increase the accuracy of the data. Rural women with no background in training were also used to compare a group of 140 people. The validity of the research instrument was confirmed by expert opinion and the reliability was confirmed by ordinal theta coefficient (θ = 0.79 - 0.91). Results of Mann-Whitney nonparametric test indicated a statistically significant difference in entrepreneurial characteristics between the experimental and control groups. Individuals who participated in entrepreneurship courses also scored higher on the two components of success and ambiguity than the control group. Sequential regression analysis also showed that 6 variables of attitude, work, age, economic status, income, participation in courses and information seeking behavior explained 33% of the probability of changes in the level of dependent variable of entrepreneurial characteristics (R2=0.33).