Analyzing Challenges and Strategies to Improve the Performance of Supportive Researchers in the Agricultural Knowledge Network of Iran

Lack of an appropriate linkage between extension and research, is one of the problems of the agricultural extension system. After the implementation of the agricultural extension new system, "senior extension researchers" and "supportive researchers" were defined in order to play a more organized role in the agricultural knowledge network. Accordingly, the purpose of this research was to analyze the challenges and strategies to improve the performance of supportive researchers in the agricultural knowledge network of Iran. The statistical population of the study consisted of research network (N= 1876), out of whom 348 people determined as sample using Daniel's sampling formula and simple sampling technique. Data were collected through a questionnaire; validity of questionnaire was approved by a panel of experts and construct validity (AVE Index). In order to measure the reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability (CR) were calculated. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS22 and Smart PLS3 software. Results of prioritizing challenges facing supportive researchers indicated that "infrastructural-supportive" dimension was in the highest, and "functional" dimension was in the lowest ranks. Also, results of prioritizing performance improvement strategies for supportive researchers showed that "infrastructural-supportive" dimension was in the highest, and "policy making-planning" dimension was in the lowest ranks. In addition, the results of confirmatory factor analysis confirmed that challenges and performance improvement strategies models had four dimensions (i.e. functional, infrastructural-supportive, structural and policy making-planning). At last, some recommendations were presented due to the research results in order to improve the performance of supportive researchers.