When offering online classes, it is necessary to ensure that all course material and objectives will be covered and learners will be successful in the course. This becomes especially important when the same class material and objectives are offered in a three-, five-, and fourteen-week format. This paper outlines the difficulty of delivering…

Recent police shootings in which multiple officers fired numerous rounds at suspects have led some observers to assert that such situations involve "contagious fire," where an initial officer's shots launch a cascade of gunfire from other officers present. Although there is anecdotal recognition of the contagious fire phenomenon among…

Academic libraries have traditionally collected reference statistics using hash marks on paper. Although efficient and simple, this method is not an effective way to capture the complexity of reference transactions. Several electronic tools are now available to assist libraries with collecting often elusive reference data--among them homegrown…

This guide provides some basic statistical techniques that may be used in writing grant proposals, analyzing reports, and evaluating programs. Examples focus on rural Pennsylvania. The first section, Understanding Data, discusses definitions, codes, and data limitations. Definitions of Census Bureau geographic, demographic, housing, and…

This publication discusses the difficulties of calculating reliable income estimates for particular groups of people and presents a methodology for overcoming those obstacles. Basically, the procedure involves setting up cumulative distributions of housing values, rental values, and family incomes for each census tract. Average housing values and…

A survey was conducted by the Rural Sociology Section of The Pennsylvania State University Cooperative Extension Service and the Montour County Extension Association, utilizing 323 ninth through twelfth grade in-school youth and 199 parents. Data were collected by means of a self-administered questionnaire. Three specific objectives of the survey…