UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- A statewide online survey now being conducted by Penn State Cooperative Extension offers taxpayers around the commonwealth input into decisions on future extension programs in their counties.

The survey is a new wrinkle added to extension's ongoing, long-range planning efforts, says Ted Alter, associate vice president of outreach and director of cooperative extension.

"As part of our program planning process, we do a statewide plan of work every five years to determine how we should spend our taxpayers' dollars," Alter says. "It's a formal needs assessment asking our stakeholders what they see as important issues that we should be tackling in cooperative extension through our educational programs.

"This time, we decided to do an online needs assessment where users and nonusers of cooperative extension can visit a site and provide us with information and their thoughts. We thought it would be easy and accessible, and we hope to reach audiences that we aren't able to reach any other way."

Alter explains that, as one of the state's largest nonformal education providers, extension is uniquely positioned to meet local and regional needs.

"Cooperative extension is in every county, and so we're really focused on the needs of people in their local communities," he says. "One of the valuable things about the online assessment is that we'll be able to look at the results by county and to really focus educational programs on the needs of the people in each of those counties." The survey asks about programming in six different areas: • Youth, family and community. • Nutrition and health. • Plant production. • Animal production. • Food processing. • Forestry and wildlife.

In addition to the survey, extension staff will be conducting focus groups around the state to gather information from stakeholders. The five-minute survey can be taken online until May 31 at http://www.extension.psu.edu/survey. For more information, contact your county Penn State Cooperative Extension office.

###

EDITORS: Contact Ted Alter at 814-863-3438 or talter@psu.edu.

Contact: Gary Abdullah gxa2@psu.edu 814-863-2708 814-863-9877 fax #120