an analysis of principal areas of applying information technology (it) in dairy cattle farms management (case study: western tehran province)

the purpose of this descriptive– survey research was to identify areas of applying information technology in dairy cattle farm management in western tehran province. the statistical population of the study consisted of 284 dairy cattle farmers, out of whom 82 dairy cattle farmers were selected as study sample using cochran formula and proportionate stratified sampling technique. the sample size was later increased to 103 dairy cattle farmers for further enhancing the precision of the study. a questionnaire was employed as the main tool of the study. the validity of the questionnaire was approved by the judgment of a panel of faculty members of the department of agricultural extension education considered as experts. in order to measure the reliability of the questionnaire, cronbach alpha coefficients were calculated for the main scales of the questionnaire which ranged from 0.94 to 0.97 indicating the reliability of the tool of the study. the data were analyzed through spss-win software. to identify the areas of applying information technology in dairy cattle farm management, factor analysis was applied. the results revealed that milk production management, information seeking & implementation of the official affairs, as well as e commerce extracted from factor analysis, explained 69.25 percent of the total variance.