The Regional Rural Development Centers rrdc.usu.edu
North Central Regional Center for Rural Development Hosted by Purdue University ncrcrd.org Western Rural Development Center Hosted by Utah State University wrdc.usu.edu
Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development Hosted by Penn State University nercrd.psu.edu
Southern Rural Development Center Hosted by Mississippi State University srdc.msstate.edu
Methodology Over the course of 2017 - 2019, the authors (with support from the National Extension Tourism Design Team) designed and conducted a national survey of Extension land-grant and Sea Grant programs to better understand their involvement in state/regional tourism programming and their perceptions of tourism related opportunities and challenges within land-grant and Sea Grant. The survey instrument included multiple choice and open-ended questions designed to measure the states that have faculty involved in tourism related work, interest in having more faculty involved in tourism related work, time allocated to tourism work, topical areas covered and specific programs offered, gaps in tourism program offerings, and challenges Extension administrators face in being able to deliver tourism programming. Data were collected through structured questionnaires administered online using Qualtrics survey software. The sample for the land-grant survey was drawn from the Regional Rural Development Centers Community Resource Development Unit State Program
Leader database and distributed to their contacts in 2019 in all 50 states in addition to the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and Virgin Islands who are part of the Cooperative Extension System. A total of 60 responses were received including 49 states (all but New Mexico) and District of Columbia, Guam and Virgin Islands. Some states had multiple responses. If there are different answers from the same state on the questions “have faculty involved in tourism” and/or “would like to have more faculty involved in tourism”, they were counted separately otherwise the responses were combined. The sample for the Sea Grant survey was drawn from the National Sea Grant contact list and distributed online through Qualtrics in 2018. A total of 26 surveys were completed from Sea Grant Extension. Table 1 shows the number of survey responses according to state, region, and affiliation. Data analysis included descriptive techniques to identify characteristics and demographics of the respondents as well as to establish general trends.
3 Extension Tourism: Impact and Opportunities of Land- and Sea-Grant Programming
extensiontourism.net
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