Influence of Academic Staff Variables on ICT use for agricultural research in Nigerian Universities

Abstract

This study was designed, to determine the influence of the academic variables on ICT utilisation for agricultural research in Nigerian universities. Stratified sampling technique was used to select respondents from two federal universities in each of the six geo-political zones of Nigeria, thus a total of twelve federal universities were used for the study with 471 of the total of academic staff in faculties/schools of agriculture in the twelve universities sampled. A set of questionnaire tagged Academic Staff Variables and ICT Utilization for Agricultural Research Questionnaire (ASVICTUARQ) was developed and used for the study. The research questions were answered using mean. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to test Ho1 while Ho2-Ho5 were tested using t-test. The hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Major findings of the study showed that: Agricultural disciplines, age, gender, and rank do not reflect any significant difference in lecturers’ use of ICT for agricultural research in Nigerian federal universities, but academic qualification was found to show significant difference. Based on the above findings, it was strongly recommended that universities should increase access to ICT facilities for all academic staff.

Keywords: Academic staff variables, ICT, Agricultural Research, Nigerian Universities