Professional competencies needed by Malaysian agricultural extension supervisors

The primary purpose of this study was to identify and analyze the professional education competencies perceived to be important to the performance of Malaysian agricultural extension supervisors. A secondary purpose was to determine the importance of the inclusion of the competencies in the preservice and/or inservice education programs that prepares persons for agricultural extension supervisor positions;Data for this study was provided by 200 agricultural extension administrators and agricultural extension supervisors of five main agricultural development agencies in West Malaysia, namely the Department of Agriculture, the Rubber Industry Smallholders Development Authority, the Federal Land Development Authority, the Farmers\u27 Organization Authority, and the Muda Agricultural Development Authority;Based on the literature review and the assistance of a panel of four jury members of extension experts in Malaysia, a total of 87 competencies were developed and grouped into eight professional extension education categories to form a two-part questionnaire along with selected personal characteristics. A 1 to 99-point scale, with one indicating not important, 50 indicating somewhat important, and 99 indicating very important, was used to obtain the respondents\u27 perception of the importance of each competency to the extension supervisors\u27 performance and for the programs inclusion. The raw data from the respondents were transformed to normal deviates scale of 267 through 733;In general, the findings were: (1) When the respondents were grouped by their employing agencies, they perceived all the 87 competencies associated with the eight categories to be of similar importance to the performance of agricultural extension supervisors, except for 19 competencies where significant differences in means were observed among groups; (2) When the respondents were grouped as extension administrators and extension supervisors, they perceived all the competencies related with the eight categories to be of similar importance to the performance of agricultural extension supervisors except for four competencies where group means differed significantly; (3) The respondents from the five agencies perceived the competencies associated with the eight categories to be of similar importance for inclusion in the preservice and/or inservice education programs that prepares people for agricultural extension supervisor positions, except for 14 competencies where means differed significantly among agencies; (4) The extension administrators and the extension supervisors perceived all the competencies to be of similar importance for the inclusion in the preservice and/or inservice education programs, except for nine competencies which had group means that differed significantly; (5) There were strong and positive relationships among the perceptions of the importance to the supervisors\u27 performance and the perceptions of the importance for the programs inclusion for all the competency categories