Attitude of Extension Experts towards Application of Information Technology in Agricultural Extension System

The continuous rapid development of telecommunications and computer-based information technology (IT) is probably one of the biggest factors of change in agricultural extension, which will facilitate and reinforce other changes. There are many possibilities for the potential applications of the technology in agricultural extension, about which attitudes of extension professionals is highly important. The present study was conducted to assess the attitude of extension professionals which can affect the adoption of IT by extension system. The population of the study consisted of 1145 extension professionals working throughout the country in different provinces. Using a stratified random sampling technique, 241 extension experts were selected as the sample for the study. The reliability and validity of the tools of study were confirmed by a pilot study and expert judgment. The results of the study indicated that the respondents had higher knowledge on word processing softwares, windows and file management in the area of computer application. In contrast, in the area of internet application they were mainly interested in getting information from specialized sites, searching by search engines of Yahoo and Google and exchanging e-mails. Correlation analysis showed that there was a significant relationship between the attitude of extension professionals and their age, educational attainments, knowledge of IT, its application and English language proficiency. Meanwhile, there was a significant difference between attitudes of male and female extension experts towards IT.