Using Tennessee youth hippology contest results as a needs assessment for 4-H horse project members and development of a train-the-trainer program for Tennessee extension agents

Land-Grant Institutions and Cooperative Extension Services seek to disseminate information to the public; however, Extension agents differ in areas of expertise, leaving some counties with minimal ability to provide 4-H horse project members with sufficient content knowledge while agents in other counties are more well versed in equine-specific areas. Results from the 2021 and 2023 Tennessee regional and 2022 Eastern National 4-H Hippology contests were used to determine areas of knowledge deficiency. Nutrition, tack, selection, health, and breeds were categories identified as areas in which 4^th-12^th grade youth lacked adequate knowledge and a training program and new curriculum was developed and delivered to county extension agents in effort to greater their equine knowledge and teaching strategies to disseminate this information to their 4-H Horse Project members and hippology teams. Statistical analysis was conducted using SAS v9.4 (Cary, NC). Nutrition questions were most often missed by senior and junior high youth (k = 7.8, 51.94%; k = 7.5, 44.22%) whereas junior youth missed training questions most frequently (k = 4.9, 54.14%). Of the 5 topic areas of deficiency, selection questions were the lowest percentage missed by senior and junior high youth (k = 5.9, 36.81%; k = 7.1, 39.53%) whereas junior youth missed health questions least frequently (k = 4, 39.87%). It was found that training status had no significant effect on scores from year to year. However, significant effects were found when comparing across question category (<i>P</i> < 0.0001), age group (<i>P</i> < 0.0001), and year (<i>P</i> < 0.0001). Despite the lack of training effect, these findings still prove valuable when assessing performance upholding the extension mission of delivering science-based information to the next generation of industry professionals.