To gain some insight and understanding of the opinion leadership phenomenon as an element of a change strategy for agricultural education, a means of identifying and investigating the personal and social characteristics of teachers identified as opinion leaders was developed. Chi square, "t" test, and Spearman's rank order correlation coefficient were used to analyze data obtained by group interviews from 272 of the 279 vocational agriculture teachers in South Carolina. Individuals nominated four or more times by their peers as sources of advice and information were identified in 11 areas of vocational agriculture program and were considered to be opinion leaders. They were found to be significantly older, more experienced and innovative, higher salaried, more highly educated, exhibited a greater degree of social participation and held more professional education offices than their peers. There was no significant difference in the number of teacher positions held, number of professional education and technical agriculture publications read, degree of satisfaction with job, conformity to social system norms, innovativeness or how cosmopolite a teacher was rated. This Ph.D. dissertation was submitted to Ohio State University. (DM)