James F. Evans Collection; Adapted from a presentation at the Symposium for Research in Agricultural and Extension Education; 1992 May; Columbus, OH. The symposium presentation was based on author's USDA publication, Cooperative extension roles and relationships for a new era : a new interdependence model and evaluation synthesis to foster work with other agencies and organizations. Springfield, VA : National Technical Information Service, 1990.
Lawani, Stephen M. (author / Director of Information Services, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture)
Format:
Conference paper
Publication Date:
1990
Published:
Nigeria
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 93 Document Number: C06876
Notes:
see C06875 for complete proceedings, In: Lawani, S.M. and Odemwingie, T., eds. Media forum for agriculture : proceedings of the inauguration ceremony, IITA, Ibadan, April 9, 1990. Ibadan, Nigeria : International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, 1990. p. 7-10
16 pages., via online journal., To date, little is known about how information flows within farmer groups and how extension interventions could be designed to deliver combined information on agriculture and nutrition. This study uses unique network data from 815 farm households in Kenya to investigate the structure and characteristics of agricultural and nutrition information networks within farmer groups. Dyadic regressions are used to analyze the factors influencing link formation for the exchange of agricultural and nutrition information. In addition, we apply fixed‐effects models to identify the characteristics of central persons driving information exchange in the two networks, as well as potentially isolated persons, who are excluded from information networks within their farmer groups. Our results show that nutrition information is exchanged within farmer groups, although to a limited extent, and mostly flows through the existing agricultural information links. Thus, diffusing nutrition information through agricultural extension systems may be a viable approach. Our findings further suggest that group leaders and persons living in central locations are important drivers in the diffusion of information in both networks and may thus serve as suitable entry points for nutrition‐sensitive extension programs. However, we also identify important heterogeneities in network characteristics. In particular, nutrition information is less often exchanged between men and women, and some group members are completely isolated from nutrition information exchange within their farmer groups. We derive recommendations on taking these differences in network structure and characteristics into account when designing nutrition‐sensitive extension programs.
13 pages., Article # 6FEA1, via online journal., Professionals in Extension who develop intercultural competence are better prepared to meet the needs of multicultural populations. This article addresses University of California Extension's formation of an intercultural competence professional development initiative. We describe our use of an integrated conceptual framework that includes Hammer's Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and Kotter's eight-step organizational change process to institutionalize the initiative. IDI pretest and posttest results indicate that California 4-H professionals are more culturally competent. The impact of the initiative also is reflected in the significant growth (151% increase) in Latino youth participation in 4-H. We provide recommendations for replicating our effort.
