Summary:

Multifunctionality has a wide meaning comprising among other local development, entrepreneurship, long-term planning, diversification of agriculture and improvement of demographic resources. Therefore problems of multifunctional rural development must be treated on a broad basis.
The work presented results of research on diversification of multifunctional rural development in the świetokrzyskie province, which covered 97 communes.
Level of multifunctional development on the investigated subjects was presented as a synthetic index of development developed by Hellwig, which has been calculated on the basis of 15 variables characterizing multifunctionality. The value of computed synthetic index ranged between 0.3055 (for the Masłów commune) to 0.0155 (for the Bliżyn commune). At this point it should be mentioned that the index has been constructed in such way that its value ranges between 0 and 1. In some cases, e.g. considerable difference in development of some objects, it may assume values below 0.
A classification of the researched communes due to their multifunctionality was conducted using Ward method. Diagram of connections created on this basis allowed for identification of four classes of communes.