Communication Factors Influencing Rural Women's Participation in Post Harvest Activities (A Case Study of Women in Asara, Karaj)

The purpose of this research was to investigate communication factors influencing rural women’s participation in post harvest activities in Asara. This survey involved a sample of 120 rural women selected from among 2810 women in the population employing stratified random sampling. They were older than 15 and living in Asaran. Content validity of the questionnaire was established by a panel of experts. A use was made of Cronbach’s alpha to measure its reliability (r=0.94). Factor analysis of the data identified the following factors; local resources/channels, organizational and mass resources/channels. These factors cumulatively accounted for 63.5 percent of the total variance. The results of ANOVA showed that there was a significant and positive correlation between rural women’s participation in post harvest activities and the rate of the use of organizational and mass communication resources/channels. Further, On the basis of step by step regression analysis, it was found that using organizational and mass communication resources/channels could explain 32.6 percent of the variation in rural women’s participation in post harvest activities.