
ERIC Number: ED325182
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1990-Nov
Pages: 94
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
The PG-TRAK Manual: Using PGCC's Custom Lifestyle Cluster System. Market Analysis MA91-3.
Boughan, Karl
In early 1990, Prince George's Community College (PGCC), in response to declining enrollments, developed an affordable and locally effective geo-demographic cluster system for meeting the college's research and marketing needs. The system, dubbed "PG-TRAK," is based on a model developed 15 years ago as a corporate marketing tool, and involves statistically re-organizing U.S. Census block data according to the natural "clustering" of neighborhoods by stable socioeconomic, cultural, and life-cycle patterns. Life-style clusters, representing demographically inherent segments of the society, could be considered all-purpose sub-markets, each with its own life-style-driven set of attitudes, values and motivations. In developing its customized system, PGCC obtained the complete demographic data set for Prince George's County at the U.S. Census tract level. A cluster analytic procedure was applied to the 90 most relevant demographic variables to reduce them to a marketing-efficient and socially reflective number of clusters (n=24). The system became operational with the cluster-encoding of PGCC's 1985-90 unduplicated credit and non-credit student lists. This three-part manual is intended as an overview of PG-TRAK. Following a brief background and methodological introduction to the system, the manual proceeds with a detailed, cluster-by-cluster data review comprising the cluster "profiles" for each of the 24 geographic areas identified, The manual concludes with a series of supplementary tables comparing all clusters across key variables. (JMC)
Descriptors: Census Figures, Cluster Analysis, Community Characteristics, Community Colleges, Comparative Analysis, Enrollment Trends, Institutional Research, Marketing, Models, Racial Composition, Residential Patterns, Social Distribution, Socioeconomic Status, Student Recruitment, Two Year Colleges, Urban Demography
Publication Type: Reports - Descriptive; Numerical/Quantitative Data
Education Level: N/A
Audience: Practitioners
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: Prince George's Community Coll., Largo, MD. Office of Institutional Research and Analysis.
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A