Investigation of Incentives to Promote Good Research in Agricultural Higher Education (a Study of Graduate Students at the College of Agriculture, Yasouj University)

The higher education system is accountable for the community development. Part of this important responsibility relies on doing useful research as one of the fundamental foundations of community development, since no scientific and rational move is possible without the support of research. Obviously, a supervisor is accountable for the guidance and mentoring of teaching and disseminating science and knowledge in higher education, and the quality and development of knowledge and research largely depends on how the supervisor works. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate incentives to promote good research in agricultural higher education among graduate students of faculty of Agriculture, Yasouj University. Using a questionnaire instrument, four main criteria, known as supervisor's resume (including seven sub-criteria), behavioral characteristics (four sub-criteria), social communication network (five sub-criteria) and students' interests (six sub-criteria) were examined. According to the rate of inconsistency, the participants of this research were 17 agricultural higher education students. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to weight the main criteria and sub-criteria. Results showed that the most important criteria for the choice of supervisors were behavioral characteristics, social communication network, student interests and supervisor's resume, respectively.