Citation
Salem, Faizi Mohammad
(2020)
Factors influencing the roles of local leaders towards community development in Bamyan, Afghanistan.
Masters thesis, Universiti Putra Malaysia.
Abstract
The need for local leadership is being demanded by the problems that arise in
the local societies across the globe. Local leaders and agricultural extension
agents should do their best of ability to solve the communities’ problem and
encourage them to trust and participate in the decision-making process –
controlling, planning and implementation of the development activities in their
community. However, the roles of local leaders are either poor or still at the early
stage in the community development, so this problem continues to be a
significant one that prevails in Afghanistan’s local societies. Therefore, this study
aimed at evaluating the factors that influence the roles of local leaders towards
community development in Bamyan province, Afghanistan. The specific
objectives were: 1) to determine the perception level of the community members
towards the internal and external roles of local leaders in community
development; 2) to determine the perception level of community members
towards the decision-making by local leaders on community development; and
3) to identify the influencing factors among the roles assumed by the local
leaders in shaping the community development decision making.
A well-structured close-ended questionnaire via self-administered was used to
collect primary data from 384 community members and simple randomized
sampling method was used to collect primary data from three tribes (Hazara,
Tajik and Sadat) in five (5) villages in Bamyan Province, Afghanistan. Both
descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized for data analysis.
Based on the descriptive statistics, the results showed that the roles of local
leader in community development were at a moderate stage. Two components
of the roles included internal roles with a total mean of 2.85 and external roles
with an overall mean of 2.75. The mean for perception towards the community development by the local leader was 2.92. Factor analysis was performed to
examine the underlying factors. The analysis showed that the KMO value for
internal and external roles were 0.951 and 0.959, respectively and Bartlett’s test
of sphericity for both was significant at the level 0.000. Therefore, the data was
suitable for PCA. Out of 76 statements, statements that had more than 1.0
eigenvalue were retained. Principal component analysis using the Varimax
rotation extracted eight (8) underlying factors, namely Compatibility, Decisions’
Needs, Overall Satisfaction, Development Standards, Information Collaboration,
Strengthening Relationship, Immunity of Community and Attracting Sponsors.
Based on the regression analysis, R2 was found to be 0.550, F test was 57.275
and three factors were found significant: decisions’ needs, immunity of the
community, and attracting sponsors availability at the level of 1%, 1%, and 5%,
respectively.
In conclusion, the roles of local leaders in community development decision making improved from lower level to moderate level based on community
members’ perception. The result also indicated that decisions’ needs, immunity
and sponsors are required for community development decision-making.
Therefore, this study recommends the need for support and training of the local
leaders based on the above-mentioned factors to improve the condition of
community development decision-making and the contribution with participation
of stakeholders in decision making and implementation of development projects
are essential for community development.
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