AJrica Media Review Vol. 1. No. 2. 1987 
© African Council on Communication Education 
Research and Training for Rural 
Development Communication: 
Adopting the Tri-Modular Training 
and Sequential Research Models 
by Ikechukwu E. Nwosu* 
Abstract 
This paper examines the role of communication training and 
research in integrated rural development. The author's major 
thesis is that if rural development communicators and workers in 
developing countries are inculcated with the right skills, they can 
utilize the rich potentials of modern and traditional 
communication to achieve rural development goals. He proposes 
an appropriate training programme for the kind of development 
communicators he envisages. He also suggests a research model 
that would facilitate the work of such communicators. His 
recommended training programme blends development theory 
and practice, development communication theory and practice, as 
well as information delivery strategies, techniques, evaluation and 
field work. 
Resume' 
Cet article passe en revue le r61e de la recherche et de la formation 
en communication dans le developpement rural integre. La these 
principale que soutient l'auteur est que si on armait les agents et 
les communicateurs du deVeloppement de competences 
ade'quates, ils pourraient utiliser les riches potentiality des 
communications rurales et modemes pour rdaliser les objectifs de 
developpement. II suggere aussi un modele de recherche qui 
faciliterait une formation qui allie la the'orie et la pratique du 
developpement, la pratique et la the'orie de la communication ainsi 
que les techniques, les strategies, revaluation des prestations 
d'information et le travail sur le terrain. 
*Dr. Ikechukwu Nwosu Is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Marketing 
University of Nigeria. Enugu Campus, Enugu. Nigeria. 
66
Introduction and Problem Statement 
Rural development efforts in Nigeria and various other parts of 
the developing world are still largely dominated by extremelyspecialised, 
urban-oriented, single purpose, professionallybalkanized 
and top-down programmes, conceptualised and 
executed by specialised government departments and other 
foreign or local agencies. Current research and experience have, 
however, continued to demonstrate that this dominant pattern or 
paradigm should give way to integrated rural development 
paradigms, models or programmes that adopt multi-professional, 
multi-disciplinary, holistic, self-reliant, mass participatory and 
beneficiaries or people-oriented approaches.l 
Nevertheless, for an integrated rural development programme to 
be effective, the various components, disciplines or professional 
areas that would be integrated and made to work together must be 
sound and effective. This means that each of the integrating 
disciplines or professions must provide a corps of well-trained 
personnel and a body of Knowledge emanating from a persistent, 
continual and reliable research tradition on rural development and 
other related subjects in that discipline. This paper is directly 
concerned with only one of those integral disciplines or professions 
- communication. 
Communication has since been recognised as a vital and 
inseparable component of the rural development process. 
Unfortunately, in Nigeria and many other developing countries, the 
utilization or application of communication in rural development 
programmes is still far from adequate. 
One major reason lor this state ol inadequacy is that most 
communication and other field officers involved in these 
development programmes still do not have adequate knowledge of 
the nature and techniques of the modern and traditional media of 
communication available to them and how these can be effectively 
and collectively used to achieve rural development objectives in 
today's development programmes that are "communicationheavy". 
Another key reason for this state of inadequacy is the glaring 
absence of research data in some areas on the role of 
communication in development and the insufficiency or 
unreliability of available research data on the subject in other 
areas. Even though experts generally agree that universally, broad 
67
general findings and research literature on communication and 
development "are far from skimpy",2 they also agree that there is a 
yawning lack of "credible cause-effect studies which give valid 
insights" into the fundamental and operational questions that 
have always bothered us such as: "Do the mass media bring about.. 
development, and if so, how and to what extent?" 3 What are the 
information needs of the rural dwellers in various localities, how do 
these compare and how best can they be satisfied? What media, 
media mix or combinations are available to different ruralites and 
how can these be most effectively used to satisfy their information 
needs and mobilize them for rural development? 
It must be unanswered questions such as t i^ above and many 
more that are often asked by rural development workers that made 
one development communicator, Lai Karamchandhi, to cry out 
that"... communication researchers have let us down. We are still 
in the dark as to how much information an extension worker in a 
village (or a rural dweller) could absorb or make the most use of."4 
This situation is not helped by the earlier-mentioned very low level 
of rural development communication research outputs in some 
developing areas. West Africa is one of those areas, especially 
Francophone West Africa This point is supported by the fact that 
for a period that covered the years before 1944 and up to 1979, 
there are only 413 published Mass Communication researches on 
West Africa and only 66 masters theses and doctoral 
dissertations.5 When we take into account the fact that these 
figures cover studies done in all areas of mass communication, it 
should become obvious to us how little or inadequate the number 
of those studies that were focused specifically on rural 
development communication must be. 
All this goes to show that before we can realise fully the rich 
potentials of communication in rural development we have to 
remove the two factors of inadequate training and inadequate 
research which constitute a cog on the wheel of effective utilization 
of communication for rural development. This paper is a 
contribution in this direction. 
Basic Questions: 
The basic universal question in the area, communication 
training and research for rural development today still remains: 
How best can we communicate with and mobilize rural dwellers on 
issues and problems which relate to their basic and higher-order 
needs within broad national development strategies? But for most 
developing countries there is this additional and most relevant 
68
question on the issue: To what extent will the dominant 
development communication theories, practices, research 
methods, training packages and communication delivery 
strategies conceptualised and tested with data from developed or 
industrialised societies be able to account for and ensure or 
facilitate development in developing or pre-industrial societies like 
Nigeria?6 
These two questions underscore the fact that for a developing 
country like Nigeria, it is not just enough to produce a corps of rural 
development communication specialists and establish a tradition 
of continual research on this issue, but a conscious effort must be 
made to ensure that the training methods, rural communication 
theones and techniques as well as the research data generated are 
very contextually relevant. In other words, we have to contextualise 
the foreign research, theoritical, training and professional 
development communication models and integrate them with local 
ones to suit our individual nations" needs and peculiar situations. 
We shall always have this in mind in this paper which is basically 
an attempt to present and examine certain concepts, techniques 
and issues that should form the key elements of more effective and 
contextualised rural development communication training and 
research strategies for Nigeria and other developing countries. 
Key Assumptions, Scope and Approach 
The major message of this paper hinges on the following key 
assumptions: 
(1) That if rural development communicators and workers in 
Nigeria and other developing countries were given the right 
training, they would be more able to utilize the rich potentials 
of modern and traditional of communication in helping to 
achieve rural development objectives. 
(2) That continual and contextual research and evaluation which 
use the right approaches will help to produce the relevant data 
needed for improving upon rural development 
communication strategies and thereby achieving rural 
development communication goals. 
While no direct attempt is made in this paper to produce or offer a 
particular curriculum for training rural development 
communicators or a manual or blueprint for executing a particular 
rural development communication research, the paper will offer 
abundant ideas and facts that can be designed or packaged into 
particularistic training curricula and research manuals for 
particular situations. 
69
In trying to accomplish the task of this paper we shall adopt the 
approach of using relevant theoretical models, secondary or cold 
data from existing research literature on this media issue as well as 
relevant reported field experiences in development projects in and 
outside Nigeria 
Definition of Key Concepts 
Let us continue by offering contextual and operational 
definitions for some of the concepts we shall be working with in 
this paper. These are development, rural development, rural 
development communication and integrated rural development. 
The term development has been differently defined by people 
from different professional and other biases. 7 But a close 
examination of these definitions, indicate that they refer to one 
thing in different words - positive change or improvement of 
human kind by reduction of disparities between the haves and the 
have-nots, either within or beyond national frontiers. We shall 
therefore adopt this as our working definition of development in 
this papar in preference to some others that have narrowly equated 
development with modernization, industrialization, technological 
innovation, economic and social change or rises in personal 
income, gross, national products and living standards. 
In line with the above definitions of development we can also 
define rural development as the process of and activities aimed at 
bringing about positive changes in the rural areas, improving the 
quality of life among ruralites, reducing urban-rural dichotomy 
and mobilizing the ruralites for development. Rural development 
activities may focus on rural health, nutrition, agrarian reform, 
literacy, family planning, environmental sanitation, small scale 
industries, fisheries, agriculture, transportation and 
politicization.8: 
Rural development communication can simply be said to be the 
art and science of using modern and "trado-rural" communication 
resources, personnel and technologies to achieve the rural 
development objectives outlined above, it is a process that ensures 
a continual, participatory two-way flow of information that is 
aimed at improving the quality of life among rural dwellers and 
getting them involved in national life and development. These 
media of communication can be used singly, but tend to be more 
effective in most rural development situations in mixed or 
combined forms. 
The concept of integrated rural development can best be defined 
as a more modern response to the old or dominant haphazard, 
70
isolationistic and piecemeal approach to rural development. It is a 
new response to an old system or rural development strategy in 
which each agency or professional group had "pursued its own 
narrow objective and its own independent course of action with 
little if any attention to whether it harmonised with 
complementary objectives and programmes or with the broader 
processes of rural development in that particular situation."9 
Training for Rural Development Communication 
Training for rural development communication can be as formal 
and tightly organized as when it takes place within the confines of 
established Mass Communication or Sociology programmes in 
various institutions of higher learning. But it can also be as 
informal and loosely organised as when it is administered to 
groups of agricultural extension workers, field information officers 
and others already engaged in information delivery and 
mobilization of ruralites for development. The training approaches 
may differ slightly in both cases, but the content should remain 
basically the same. What we are offering in this paper should, 
therefore, be useful in both instances. 
The broad aim of a rural development communication training 
programme should be the production of a specialised 
communicator who can effectively inform, educate, motivate, 
persuade, live with and mobilize rural dwellers using modern and 
traditional media of communication and who can plan, implement, 
manage and evaluate various rural development campaigns or 
programmes aimed at improving the quality of life in the rural 
areas. The broad training approach should be interdisciplinary 
because there is no single academic discipline that can fully 
provide all the knowledge needed for effective rural development 
communication projects. As Erskine Childers put it, 'You do not 
get this training by getting a degree in Mass Communication, a 
degree in development economics, or a degree in journalism. 
You don't even get i t . . . by getting something like an agricultural 
extension certificate.10 
This is why we shall, in this paper, divide our rural development 
communication training package into three modules: 
(1) General development theory and practice 
(2} Communication and development communication theory 
and practice and 
(3) Development communication/information delivery 
strategies, techniques and evaluation. 
71
The Tri-Modular training model sketched on page 77 summarises 
these 3 modules. 
First Module: 
The General development theory and practice aspect of the 
training package should be in line with our operational definition 
of development offered earlier and should emphasize the multifaceted 
and interdisciplinary nature of the development process. It 
should include a broad overview of the theoretical and research 
literature on development in various parts of the world as well as a 
thorough review of successful and unsuccessful development 
projects in the world as case studies. 
This multi-perspectival approach to the understanding of 
development should emphasise the place of policy planning and 
execution, the behavioural and management sciences, sociology, 
economics, government, administrative and bureaucratic 
practices/influences in the development process. It should also 
treat very well the role of communication, history, geography and 
other socio-economic change factors in the development process. 
Rural development theory and practice should also receive direct 
treatment. 
Second Module 
The second module of the training package focuses directly on 
communication theory and practice, as well as on development 
communication as defined earlier on in this paper. It will involve a 
thorough review of past and present theories of communication 
that may have direct or indirect bearing on development and rural 
development. In this module too, relevant studies on 
communication and development and rural development, 
especially those done in Third World contexts, should be critically 
studied.ll These would include such pioneering and leading works 
as those of Daniel Lemer, Wilbur Schramm (1964), Lerner and 
Schramm (1967), Pye Lucian [ed.l (1963), Everett Roggers and F.F. 
Shoemaker (1971), C.F. Hovland et al. (1949) and Sean McBrlde et 
al. (1980). More especially, remarkable attemps by African and 
other Third World scholars to contextually apply the models 
developed by the above-listed foreign studies and offer new ones, 
should be closely examined.12 They include works by Frank 
Ugboajah (1976 and 1983), A. Basu (1969), A. Moemeka (1981), M. 
Mbithi (1973), Nwuneli (1984), Sobowale and Sogbamu (1984), 
S.K. Williams (1978) and Ikechukwu Nwosu (1985). 
72
This segment of the training package should also contain 
specific instructions on dominant research methods in 
communication, especially those that are very useful in 
development communication studies. Such methods would 
include sample survey or polling techniques, field experimental 
and laboratory research methods, case study approach and 
content analysis. A thorough knowledge of the history, dynamics, 
characteristics, techniques and problems of the modern and 
"trado-rural" media as vehicles of participatory communication, as 
opposed to mere tools of information dissemination, will also be 
handled under this component of the training package. This would 
include a thorough study of the rural press, rural broadcasting 
networks, interpersonal communication of "oramedia" networks, 
mass persuasion, mass mobilization, and opinion leadership 
systems. 
Also in this module, attempt should be made to treat contextually 
and thoroughly the theory, techniques and implications of 
national communication policy planning, formulation, execution 
and evaluation for national and rural development. Then it is 
important to also stress the need and techniques for appraising 
the information needs and information environment of the rural 
dwellers under this module. 
Third Module: 
All this will lead us into the third and final module in the proposed 
training package - Communication/Information delivery 
techniques and evaluation. Here the emphasis is on providing 
adequate and special communication skills to the rural 
development communicator and contextually assessing the 
existing skills. 
There is no doubt that the communication of information and 
persuasive materials is one of the most important functions of the 
development communicator. He must therefore continually 
acquire and sharpen his skills in this area. This will involve 
developing keen expertise in various mass media vehicles such as 
newspaper, radio, television, film and magazine. In the newspaper, 
magazine and other media, for instance, he should learn special 
skills that include news, features, article, editorial and column 
writing, editing, as well as how to use cartoons, photographs and 
other artworks as message carriers. In the broadcast of eletronic 
media, skills that must be acquired include news production, spot 
announcements, commentaries, documentaries, interviews, panel 
discussions, video and audio tapes, slides, other audio-visual 
73
materials, as well as film editing techniques. Skills in preparing 
and using the miscellaneous media like posters, charts, graphs, 
calendars and brochure will also be very necessary. All these come 
under what have come to be known as the Information, Education 
and Communication (IEC) packages. 
Then in this third module too, the all-important skills needed for 
effective usage of trado-rural modes of communication for 
information, persuasion and feedback must be acquired. They 
include folk songs and dances or folk theatre, village rituals and 
rites, town criers, family visits, marriage and circumcision 
ceremonies.printed village festivals, village meetings, puppetry, age 
grade functions, marketing or ceremonies, talking drums, schools, 
churches, mosques and initiations. 
But after acquiring skills in these modern and trado-rural 
communication modes, the development communicator must 
learn also in this module, how to combine or mix these media 
whenever this becomes necessary. This is because case reports and 
research have consistently indicated that for greater effectiveness, 
some kind of media combination is often needed in many rural 
development communication efforts ~ especially in information 
and mass mobilization campaignsl3 which the rural development 
communicator is expected to be adept in. 
The following table helps to strengthen the point that in most 
situations modern and trado-rural media combination or mix 
leads to greater effectiveness because it has many advantages over 
single channels of communication- 
One other technique that needs to be mastered in this third 
module is the art and science of motivating people to action. The 
rural development communicator would need this to succeed in 
most ruralites mobilization projects and should use the rewards, 
benefits and opportunities that would accrue to the ruralites if 
they participate or comply, as key motivating factors. 
There is also this very important need for the rural-development 
communicator to be a kind of public relations officer and kind of 
marketing and advertising expert. So, some advertising and public 
relations skills must be acquired in this third module. In the area of 
public relations, for instance, the rural development 
communicator must learn the techniques of effective community 
relations in addition to some other public relations skills like 
organizing special events, contests and similar activities in order 
to use them as forums for disseminating rural development 
information and obtaining feedbacks. 
Marketing and advertising techniques that come handy in many 
rural development projects, campaign and mobilization efforts 
74
Direction 
Time taken to 
reach large 
audience 
Serial - 
Number | 
Table One* 
Comparative Characteristics of Mass Media, trado-rural media 
and Combined Media for Rural Development Communication 
Characteristics 
2
1
.
. 
3. Accuracy in Large 
Audience 
4. Ability to Overcome 
selective exposure 
and selective 
perception 
Feedback 5. 
6. Ability to answer 
rural Needs of 
the audience 
8
7
.
. Participation 
Rural Credibility 
9. Rural Accessibility 
10. Most likely main 
effects 
•Adapted and contextually modified from World Bank Staff Working Paper, 
No. 266, 1977; p. 363. 
include audience segmentation, consumer, beneficiary or target 
audience research, planning, distribution, communication and 
results evaluation. Researcher John Woods must have had these 
facts in mind when he stated his belief that "the best analogy for 
development communication is the basic concept of marketing.. A 
Mass 
Media 
Channels 
One-Way 
High 
High 
Low 
Little 
Low 
Low 
Low 
Low 
Increased 
knowledge 
75 
Trado- Mass Media 
Rural Combined with 
Media Modes Trado-rural Media 
Two-Way Two-Way 
Rapid Slow 
Low 
High High 
Much Much 
high High 
High 
High 
High 
High 
high high 
Attitude 
change 
Increased 
knowledge and 
attitude change
very carefully integrated advertising campaign using mass media 
Is usually part of the total scheme... The development field (must) 
have a systematic programme that would be comparable to what 
marketing does for industry ".15 All this will require much field 
work. 
Finally, in this third module, the development communicator 
must be exposed to the theory and practice of the self-reliance 
philosophy which has been found to be a vital ingredient in most 
successful rural development projects across the globe. Even 
though it has been called "Ujamaa" in Tanzania, "Juche" in Korea, 
Tzuli Kongsheng" in China, "Olu Obode" in Nigeria and various 
other names in various otherplaces. the guiding philosophy of selfreliance, 
which the development communicator must allow to 
shape his activities, remains basically the same. Its meaning and 
relevance to rural development communication can best be 
appreciated by going through Professor EA.U. Ikoku's tacit 
explanation of the concept which goes thus: 
Through Self Reliance, priorities will change towards production for basic 
needs for those most in need: mass participation is ensured; local factors are 
utilized much better, creativity is stimulated: structure/cultural conditions 
will be more compatible: there will be much diversity in development; there 
will be less alienation; ecobalance will be much easily attained: important 
externalities are internalised or given to neighbours at the same level: 
solidarity with others at the same level gets solid basis:... life begins to be 
more meaningful.16 
To be meaningful or useful. Instructions to development 
communicators must emphasise the point that a self reliant 
development communication project should be initiated from the 
grassroot or rural areas "where it can unfold itselt as mass action"; 
but should not be misconceived to imply autarchy or negative selfsufficiency. 
It should imply "a redirection and recomposition . .. 
and cooperation, not the building of tight walls around all units".17 
This will enable the activities of a self-reliance oriented 
development communicator to fit in properly into the broad aims 
and objectives of an integrated rural development scheme as we 
defined it earlier. 
The three training modules we discussed above can be 
graphically or diagramatically represented as follows for easier 
understanding, appreciation and rememberance:- 
76
General treatment of 
development theory 
and practice 
Communication and 
development 
Communication Theory 
I 
and Practice 
Development Communication 
Information delivery strategies, 
techniques and evaluation and 
I 
field work 
FIG ONE: THE PROPOSED TRI-MODULAR DEVELOPMENT 
COMMUNICATION TRAINING MODEL. 
RESEARCH FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT COMMUNICATION 
As we pointed out earlier, in addition to producing a corps of welltrained 
development communicators, developing countries and 
development strategies need also to continually provide an array of 
relevant, contextual and reliable research data on rural 
development communication in various situations to facilitate the 
job of the development communicators. We have also mentioned 
some of the research questions that need to be answered. Many 
more can be raised. 
In this section of the paper we shall directly examine some key 
general ideas, issues and strategies that should form the bedrock 
or foundation for designing and executing more effective and 
contextualised rural development communication research 
projects in developing countries like Nigeria. We shall also attempt 
to capture or present these ideas in a model we shall call the 
Sequential Rural Development Communication Research Model. 
The first point that must be made here is that rural development 
communication research should focus more on applied, 
functional, utilitarian, field-operational need-based and culturallyrelevant 
studies. What is needed here is a shift of emphasis and not 
77
a complete neglect of the prototype and theory-building studies 
aimed at general development of scholarship and research in mass 
communication. The need for this shift in emphasis is supported 
by Professor Robert Lindsay who observed that research in this 
area has been dominated by those he described as neo-Lazarsfeldapproach 
researchers who believe that "communication research 
is and out ever to be the province of bemused academics whose 
principle dedication is to the aseptic production of esoteric 
information derived from available data and based upon arcane 
hypotheses."l8 According to him these researchers or 
communication theoreticians who are found mostly in the 
universities see their main function as that of generating "infinite 
numbers of reports, articles, monographs, books, journals, models, 
proposals, constructs, paradigms, analyses, perspectives and 
prospectuses," most of which do not directly address the needs of 
the "planet's millions of culturally, educationally, (informationally) 
and economically deprived."l9 
Additionally, there should be continued conscious attempts to 
rid rural development communication research efforts in the 
developing countries of undue foreign influence. In doing this, 
however, we should ensure that we do not throw the baby away 
with the bath water by throwing away appropriate foreign research 
models and techniques with inappropriate ones. What we need to 
do is to sift the relevant foreign models, modify them contextually 
and use them in finding answers to the many problems of rural 
development, communication. We have not yet adequately done 
this kind of sifting or surgical operation and it is needed urgently. 
Frank Ugboajah would agree with this observation and has 
strongly criticised past diffusion of innovation studies for this 
weakness. In his own words: 
"The most disturbing area of field research in the Third World in 
communication studies happens to be diffusion studies, which owing to 
Internal Ideological problems, are associated with agricultural and health 
extension work and are therefore accompanied by a messianic/cultural 
Invasion. There should be a de-emphasis on communication and national 
development approaches of the Wilbur Schramm. Daniel Lemer and Everett 
Rogers types which were carried out with paramount academic 
qualifications but not necessarily with social relevance".20 
This same case for socially-relevant and functional rural 
development communication studies was re-echoed by Adedeji and 
Goran when they stated pointedly that, "Most African governments 
are positive to social science research that is 'applied' and 'useful', 
78
i.e. potentially offers an answer to questions that bother 
government decision makers. There is less understanding of 
research that is basic', i.e. primarily done and written for an 
academic audience. "This attitude is understandable . . . "21 
The implication of all this is that the rural development 
communication research would use any of the known social 
science, administrative or even marketing research approaches, 
but has to first check utility and contextualiry quotients. In other 
words, case studies, participant and non-participant observations, 
laboratory and field experimental approaches, sample surveys, 
content analysis, documentary research and historical research, 
critical research, whichever is appropriate in each study, may be 
used; but it must be useful and contextually relevant before it can 
be seen as appropriate. 
In addition, for the qualitative research methods among them to 
be considered appropriate for rural development communication, 
the techniques they employ must be valid and reliable. To ensure 
this, we must ensure that our various sampling and datagathering 
techniques are accurate; that our research design is 
most appropriate for solving the problem being tackled; that our 
study is replicable; that the statistical techniques we employed are 
appropriate for the data generated; that our data, interpretations, 
conclusions and recommendations are well thought-out and 
clearly presented or communicated to rural development policy 
makers or field workers that would use them. 
Adopting the Sequential Rural Development Communication 
Research Model we are proposing in this paper will help to assure 
the achievement of most of the above objectives. The model sees 
quantitative research in rural development communication as an 
input-output matrix or arrangement in which the quality of the 
output is solely dependent on the quality of the input. In line with 
the popular expression, garbage-in-garbage-out, if the input 
components are unreliable and invalid, then, the outputs or results 
would definitely become invalid and unreliable. In rural 
development communication studies designed and executed in 
most of rural African or Asian settings, for instance, there are many 
problems or obstacles that stand in the way of all social 
researchers that have to be checked before the research output can 
be reliable and valid and we shall briefly examine some of them in 
this paper. They occur at various levels of the qualitative research 
process as can be represented in our proposed sequential model 
which can be sketched as follows: 
79
Problem Statement 
Literature Review 
Variables and concepts 
identification and 
operationalization 
Research Questions 
and Hypotheses 
Sampling, Datagathering, 
measurements 
Findings, Analyses and 
Interpretations 
Conclusions and 
Recommendations 
FIG. TWO THE PROPOSED SEQUENTIAL RURAL DEVELOPMENT 
COMMUNICATION RESEARCH MODEL.22 
The problem of rural development research starts at the A-input 
or problem statement and literature level as shown in the above 
model, so the research has to start working towards valid and 
reliable outputs from there. Many past studies on this issue had 
not involved the ruralities fully in the process of determining what 
their real practical communication problems are. As a result they 
had spent much time and money studying problems that have 
little, if any direct practical value to the rural development workers 
or the ruralites themselves. Problem identification in rural 
development communication research should therefore undergo a 
perspectival change from its present dominantly theoretical, urban 
viewpoint and low-rural-consideration form to a form that is 
dictated by the ruralities" needs and their socio-cultural environment. 
Literature search and cold-data acquisition is another 
problem at this level because of their scarcity and the tendency for 
many of the studies to be unpublished. Even the published ones 
are sometimes treated as secret documents by some 
establishments. 
oU
Then, at the B-input or variables/concepts operationalizatlon 
level the key problem facing rural development communication 
researcher is how to define various local, traditional or rural 
African. Asian or Latin America concepts, operationalize or reduce 
them to measurable iorms without any loss in their original 
meaning and relevance to the ruralites and their problems. For 
example, it may not be very easy to define dowry payment in 
marriage ceremonies, oracle consultation, kola nut breaking and 
some burial rites as trado-rural communication modes or variables 
and reduce them to measurable or quantifiable forms. If their 
operayonalization is not carefully done, they will right away 
introduce negative biases and invalidity elements that will for sure 
negatively affect the research results or outputs. 
There are also problems at the C-input or Research Questions 
and Hypotheses level which the rural development communication 
researcher must leam to handle with utmost care. For one thing, 
because hypotheses are nothing more than tentative propositions 
that show the relationship between variables and are put up for 
testing, they must be related to or drawn from real-life rural 
development communication problems or situations in order to 
be useful. If this is not done, their contextuality and practical 
applicability are lost and the rural development communication 
theories that arise from such studies will be mere theorems,23 
while the data generated will be quite sterile. 
This takes us to the D-point of Sampling, Data-gathering and 
Measurements level. This is, perhaps, the most problematic level in 
the sense that many, if not most of the errors of validity and 
reliability in rural development communication research arise 
from this level. Take Sampling, for instance. Reliable probability 
samples are often quite difficult to draw in rural areas where the 
houses are not arranged in streets and blocks as in the urban or 
developed areas. Then there are many data-gathering problems 
that can for convenience be grouped into three: problems arising 
from the researchers, problems arising from the rural research 
situation and problems arising from the rural respondents. 
Starting with the researcher himself, it is a well-known fact that 
a researcher significantly affects the data he gathers in many 
ways.24 But in rural development communication research this 
problem is greatly magnified by the fact that most of the time (if not 
all the time) the researcher is "alien" to the rural area and the 
ruralites. He is mostly either an urbanite or a foreigner. Even when 
the researcher tries to live with the ruralites for a while, the 
problem may only be slightly reduced, but it will not be removed 
completely. 
81
This issue is made worse by the fact that the research situation 
in the rural areas is not ideal for effective research and for 
researchers. For example, communication by road, telephone and 
other means is either very difficult, non-existent or frustrating. 
Factors like poor weather and common rural diseases make the 
situation worse. Many other factors also conspire to make the rural 
communication research situation far from ideal. One more factor 
that must be mentioned specifically is the inadequacy of computer 
facilities in most rural development communication research 
situations. We all know how time-wasting it is to calculate T-tests, 
cross-tabulation, Chi-square and correlation scores using desk 
calculators or similar means, and how easy it is to make mistakes 
that can add up to negatively affect the validity and reliability of the 
final data. 
The problems arising from the respondents are also many and 
varied. If the rural development communication researcher 
overcomes the problems we highlighted above as well as others that 
include drawing up a reliable questionnaire (in say Sample Survey) 
that correctly operationalizes rural" concepts and variables into 
questions, he will still have to deal with the deficiencies, apathy, 
cultural traits and other peculiarities of the ruralite respondents. 
In the language area, the researcher would have to cope with the 
problems of language and dialect multiplicity among most rural 
dwellers as well as the translation of a questionnaire prepared .in 
English or French to these local languages and dialects without 
losing meaning. Cultural traits or problems in this area can be 
exemplified with what Isaac Obeng-Quaidoo has described as the 
African concept of time25 and what Sylvanus Ekwelie has 
described as the belief among some Nigerians that children, who 
are gifts from God, should not be counted by their parents during 
research interview sessions because such a counting has an 
"undertone of boastfulness".26 
If we add the above problems to the universal problem arising 
from the respondent everywhere, we can picture how enormous the 
problem is for rural development communication research. Johan 
Galtung summarised these universal problems thus: 
(1) To what extent can we determine a person's true position on 
any given issue from his verbal expressions? 
(2) To what extent can we infer what a person thinks from what 
he says? 
(3) To what extent can we infer a person's behaviour from his 
verbal expressions?"27 
82
Then there is the problem of measurement which the rural 
development communication researcher must face after gathering 
his data. The earlier-reviewed problems, for sure, affect 
measurement, but the major problem here seems to be that of 
ensuring that the data we are measuring reflect or are closely 
related to rural realities. It does not seem reasonable for instance to 
measure day television viewership behaviour among rural farmers 
that mostly do not have television sets and work in their farms 
during the day. That researchers sometimes commit this 
measurement error was confirmed in the African context by B.I.C. 
Ijomah when he wrote that "The problem of measurement is a very 
realistic one, and one that challenges whatever we purport to be 
doing in Africa in the sanctified name of research. For 
measurement to be valid, the researcher must convince himself 
that he is measuring the observable facts. There is a great chasm 
between facts and data. All facts may be data, but all data cannot be 
facts. A measurable datum is one that should reflect social 
reality."28 
At the E-input of findings, analysis and interpretation level the 
rural development communication researcher should not just 
present his findings clearly but should check them for meaningful 
relationships, regularities or patterns that are valid, reliable and 
informative both for practical purposes and for scholarship. In 
doing all these the researcher can use descriptive or inferential 
statistics but he should not allow his analysis and interpretations 
to be negatively affected by his over concern with statistical theory, 
formal communication theories, over-ambition to establish tight 
relationship between formal statistical theories and formal 
communication theories in a single study, over-dependence on the 
computer and deemphasis of thought or brain power, sheer desire 
to be quantitative and sophisticated because it is fashionable and 
scientific, picking out and summarizing and presenting his chi 
square, t-test and Cramers-V and other such information from the 
computer without caring whether anybody besides his colleagues 
within the "esoteric circles" understands him.29 
Finally, at the F-Input or Conclusion and Recommendation level 
the rural development communication researcher should guard 
against drawing faulty conclusions by not allowing his data to 
guide him strictly to his conclusions by misinterpreting his 
findings or making such common mistakes. Because. rural 
development communication research is applied and practical 
problem-solving-oriented, the reseacher should not restrict 
himself to theoretical or research recommendations. He should go 
beyond this to offer practical policy recommendations that can be 
83
used by rural development communication policy makers and 
implementers who sometimes, in most developed countries, are 
not able to make the quantum jump from ordinary research 
findings, conclusions and recommendations to how these can be 
practically applied in real life rural development communications. 
Summary and Conclusion 
In this paper we have tried to examine the role of communication 
training and research in the integrated rural development 
programmes of Third World countries like Nigeria. Ghana. 
Afghanistan and Nicaragua. In doing this, we have reviewed the 
problems involved, different attempts and methods used in trying 
to solve them and the results or effects of such attempts and 
methods. We have also drawn some conclusions and made specific 
recommendations in the area of rural development 
communication training and research. We further tried to capture 
all these in two largely descriptive models that should facilitate our 
understanding of our discussions - the tri-modular training and 
Sequential Research Models. 
After all this, the conclusion we still must make is that in order to 
reap fully the rich benefits of communication in achieving rural 
development goals, we must produce a corps of well-trained rural 
development communicators and researchers who can, among 
other things, know how to remove or reduce the negative or 
unwanted influences of foreign communication and research 
models, know the benefits of effectively combining modern and 
trado-rural communication modes in executing rural development 
projects and realise that communication has to work closely with 
other related fields to achieve integrated rural development 
objectives. 
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1. Many of such researches and experiences are reported in Frank Okwu 
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84
3. Ibid 
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85
13. Ikechukwu E. Nwosu, Ibid: see also Kwame Boafo, Formulating 
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14. See World Bank Staff Working Paper. No. 266. 1977. p. 363. 
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19. ibid. 
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28. B.I.C. Ijomah. Op. CIL. p. 21. 
29. Ibid. p. 24. See also David O. Edeani. "Priority Position of Communication In 
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86