KNOWLEDGE LEVEL OF AGRICULTURAL PERSONNEL WORKING IN AGRICULTURAL BRANCHES IN NINEVEH GOVERNORATE AGRICULTURAL DIRECTORATE IN THE FIELD OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The research aims at identifying the level of knowledge in the field of rural development of the agricultural personnel in Nineveh governorate in general, and in all fields of the research which included cultural, economic, social, agricultural and health fields, and then to find the correlation between the level of that knowledge of the agricultural personnel and each of the following independent variables (age, gender, educational level, specialty, origin, years of service in the agricultural departments and participation in study courses), and finally, to arrange the fields of research according to the weight percentage of that field. The study included all the agricultural personnel in the agricultural divisions of Nineveh Directorate of Agriculture and their number was (186) employees among which a simple random sample was chosen of 75% (i.e. 100 employees), after excluding (30) employees that were included in the measurement of the stability of the research’s criterion. For the purpose of collecting research data, a questionnaire form was prepared consisting of three parts; the first part included a number of independent variables, and the second part included (80) items to measure the knowledge of agricultural personnel distributed over five fields having to do with the rural development process, including each of (cultural, economic, social, agricultural and health fields). After verifying the apparent credibility and content credibility, the questionnaire was subjected to a preliminary test, and stability was measured using split half reliability method; the stability coefficient was (0.93) after correction with Spearman- Brown formula.The results of the study showed that the knowledge level of the said personnel in the rural development process in general was high. The results also showed that the level of knowledge of those personnel in the(cultural, economic, social, agricultural and heath) fields was also high. The results also showed that there is a po