Abstract
This study explored what relationship existed between UI Extension educators and faculty’s social identity as science communicators and the communication types they most commonly used. The findings from this study can help UI Extension, and the Cooperative Extension Service increase their communication and programming impact to new and changing audiences through specifically tailored research-based information that is disseminated effectively. This non-experimental, sequential, mixed-method study with a qualitative priority utilized surveys and interviews to gather data. The data found in the surveys described how UI Extension educators and faculty communicate with constituents. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, paired t-tests, and Wilcoxon-Signed Ranks tests. UI Extension educators and faculty’s most preferred communication channels were walk-in, phone calls, and emails. Their constituents preferred walk-in, email, and phone calls. There was significant increase in time spent communicating during COVID as compared to before, and the utilization of mass communication also significantly increased. Interviews were used to understand their social identities as science communicators. Participants were selected for interviews through stratified purposive sampling based upon their location, urban or rural county, and communication type most commonly used. Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, broken into meaning units, and open coded. Five main themes were identified: Continual development, technology, research dissemination, evaluation and motivation, and community relationships. These two sets of information were then mixed using cross case comparison to find significant relationships. This study found a significant relationship between an individual’s most commonly used communication type and their social identity as science communicators.