Competency-based education, curriculum development, agricultural extension, pre-service training, competency alignment, Rwanda, DACUM methodology, extension education, graduate employability, digital extension

Abstract

Consider a policy maker who wants to know whether farmer field schools work better than training-and-visit systems. She turns to the published literature and finds 200 studies with conflicting results, inconsistent outcome measures, and no standardized quality benchmarks. This is the evidence synthesis problem that systematic reviews are supposed to solve. This research evaluated the methodological quality of 87 published reviews on agricultural extension effectiveness, assessing adherence to eight quality dimensions using a structured appraisal instrument. Reviews were retrieved from five databases covering publications from 2010 to 2023, with fieldwork conducted through the University of Padova. Only 34 reviews (39.1%) followed PRISMA guidelines. PRISMA-compliant reviews scored an average of 77.9 out of 100 on methodological quality versus 43.5 for non-PRISMA reviews — a 34.4-point gap. The weakest dimensions were bias assessment (50.8) and synthesis method transparency (54.8). Reviews published after 2018 showed higher quality scores than earlier ones, suggesting gradual improvement. These findings indicate that the evidence base on extension effectiveness is only as reliable as the reviews that synthesize it, and that raising methodological standards should be a priority for the field.