A study of Tennessee extension faculty attitudes of poverty and public assistance

The purpose of this study was to examine and evaluate the Tennessee Agricultural Extension faculty and staff's attitude about poverty and public assistance. Seven specific objectives of the study were identified. The population included all professional staff members and paraprofessionals employed by the University of Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service and Tennessee State University. The sample size was set at 250 in order to achieve at least 95 percent confidence in findings. A random sample procedure was used to select the 250 participants. The study was Expost Facto in nature. The instrument used in the study contained 37 statements on a 5 point Likert attitudinal scale measuring respondents attitudes toward poverty and public assistance. Other parts of the instrument included questions which respondents indicated a yes/no answer relating to Extension education programs and demographic data. A pilot study was conducted with 30 Extension faculty and staff. The reliability from the pilot study was considered adequate. The response rate for the study was 86 percent. Following the return of the responses internal consistency of the questionnaire was again checked using Cronbach's alpha. Data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. (SPSS Release 4.1) on the IBM 3081 mainframe computer at the University of Tennessee computing center.