Empirical Analysis of Online Communication Tools Used by Agricultural Students When Searching for a Graduate Program

The complex agricultural problems of today necessitate an agricultural workforce comprised of diverse individuals with graduate degrees in agricultural and related fields. To attract this diverse workforce, colleges of agriculture must appeal to the needs and preferences of prospective graduate students. While familial and education background influence motivation to obtain graduate degrees, culture is also an influential factor in university choice. By operationalizing the concepts of audience segmentation and cultural dimension theory, the purpose of the present study was to explore if the use of communication tools used as a scientific information source during the graduate program search process was related to demographic and background characteristics of graduate students. By collecting responses from graduate students at nine highly ranked colleges of agriculture across the U.S., this quantitative study revealed the majority of respondents used department/program websites, graduate school websites, email communication, and individual faculty members’ lab websites during their graduate program search. There were strong associations between communication channel use and gender, age, marital status, and current degree sought. Uncertainty avoidance predicted use of graduate school websites and departmental/program websites. Power distance predicted use of video calls. Researchers recommended practical examinations of department websites to cater to preferences of diverse students, as well as additional research to further understand the differences in age, degree, and marital status categories.