SYSTEM VERSUS INDIVIDUAL EFFECTS: A CROSS-NATIONAL STUDY OF AGRICULTURAL INNOVATIVENESS

Data collected from a total of 1,822 farm operators in eight Indian (N= 680) and eighteen Nigerian (N= 1,142) villages were analyzed both at the individual and social system levels to provide a crossnational comparison of individual and system effects on the innovativeness of individual members of a system. Three major objectives of this analysis were : (1) to ascertain the degree to which individual and system variables affect the innovativeness of individual members of a system, (2) to determine the extent to which system variables and individual variables each contribute (independently of the other) to explaining individual innovativeness, and (3) to account for the joint contribution of individual and system variables (by considering them systematically and simultaneously) in explaining individual innovativeness. Data relating to these three objectives were assessed using a series of zero-order, partial, and multiple correlations, respectively. In most cases, our analysis produced significant correlations (p