THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SELECTED FORESTRY BACKGROUND INFORMATION FOR MISSISSIPPI COUNTIES AND FORESTRY PROGRAMS PLANNED BY COUNTY AGENTS WITHIN THE MISSISSIPPI COOPERATIVE EXTENSION SERVIC

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between days allocated to forestry by Mississippi county agents in their Plans of Work (POW) and the following predictor variables: tenure of the county agent; county agent attitude toward "county Extension forestry programs;" percentage of the county classified as commercial forest land; percentage of the county under private nonindustrial forest ownership; annual county value of forestry production; acres in the county in need of silvicultural treatment; and acres in the county treated under cost-share programs. An additional purpose was to determine the effect of inservice training on the aforementioned relationships.;The sample included 62 Mississippi Cooperative Extension Service (MCES) county agents and their counties. Tenure data were collected from the MCES Personnel Department. A Semantic Differential was used to index attitude. Forestry data for each county were collected from information compiled by the MCES Forestry Department. Data for the criterion variable, "days allocated to forestry by the county agent," were collected from the MCES Plan of Work for fiscal years 1981 and 1982. Inservice training was conducted for county agents by the Extension forester during fiscal year 1981.;Pearson product moment correlation analyses revealed that five of the eight predictor variables had positive, statistically significant relationships with the criterion variable before and after inservice training. "Attitude" had a statistically significant relationship with the criterion variable before inservice training, but not afterwards. "Tenure" and "acres treated" had not statistically significant relationships with the criterion variable. No statistically significant differences were found between the eight pairs of correlation coefficients calculated before and after inservice training.;Multiple regression analyses revealed that the predictor variables explained 38 percent of the variance in the criterion variable before inservice training and 30 percent of the variance following inservice training. Inservice training had no statistically significant effect on the amount of variance in the criterion variable explained by the predictor variables before and after inservice training.;Recommendations were made for more emphasis on program planning during training and evaluation of county agents. Future study was recommended to determine additional variables relating to forestry program planning.