Purpose: The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) devised an algorithm to classify veterans as Urban, Rural, or Highly Rural residents. To understand the policy implications of the VHA scheme, we compared its categories to 3 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and 4 Rural-Urban Commuting Area (RUCA) geographical categories. Method: Using…

This article examines spatial relationships between environmental hazards (i.e., pork feed lots, brick kilns, final assembly plants and a rail line) and markers of social marginality in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Juarez represents an opportunity for researchers to test for patterns of injustice in a recently urbanizing metropolis of the Global South.…

One of the most fundamental drivers of change at the nation's community colleges is enrollment. This paper examines the enrollment patterns of community colleges across five different regions of the country. It illustrates how changing populations will affect the demographic make-up of the student body for each state.

Two improvements in teaching linear regression are suggested. The first is to include the population regression model at the beginning of the topic. The second is to use a geometric approach: to interpret the regression estimate as an orthogonal projection and the estimation error as the distance (which is minimized by the projection). Linear…

In this article the authors concentrate on the change in the concept of employability during the Bologna process. They show that employability has gradually moved from a peripheral to a core presence in the most recent Bologna process documents. Using a Finnish university merger (University of Eastern Finland) as an example, the authors…

This article uses unique community-level data aggregated from censuses of associations to analyze growth and volatility in rural populations of grassroots associations. A qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) shows that the two main paths to growth were (1) centralization in polycephalous (multicentered) municipalities and (2) population growth…

This article investigates the relationship between crime and quality of life in Saskatoon, Canada. The city has one of the highest crime rates in the country and has been referred to as the "Crime Capital of Canada", a label that comes as a surprise to many residents and causes considerable concern among others. The aim of this research…

The current study is an attempt to examine post-migration psycho-cultural adjustment factors that potentially inhibit foreign-born students' (FBS) adjustment at community colleges (CCs) in the United States. Although much research has been conducted to better understand various aspects of FBSs' adjustment challenges little attention has been paid…

Using the notion that research should "enlighten" policy responses, this paper considers the complex locational factors that affect and underlie patterns of Indigenous student mobility in Queensland, Australia. The paper presents data, captured through an action research project, to explore mobility "in and through" two…

Introduction: Knowledge translation (KT) initiatives have the potential to improve prescribing quality and produce savings that exceed the cost of the KT program itself, including the cost of evaluation using pragmatic study methods. Our objective was to measure the impact and estimated savings resulting from the distribution of individualized…

American policy makers, educators, and others are concerned that predicted workforce shortages in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields will have a catastrophic impact on the economy. This article takes a realistic look at the "STEM problem," identifying how community colleges can be a part of the solution. We provide…

Although numerous studies have documented the positive association between parental involvement in children's education and a range of academic and motivational outcomes, less work has focused on the Latino immigrant population. Yet, Latino students constitute the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States. This study examines the…

Background: Several states have implemented childhood obesity surveillance programs supported by legislation. Representatives from Idaho wished to develop a model for childhood obesity surveillance without the support of state legislation, and subsequently report predictors of overweight and obesity in the state. Methods: A coalition comprised of…

In this brief, authors Michael Staunton and Eleanor Jaffee review the key findings and recommendations from research conducted in the first half of the Coös Youth Study, which began in 2008 and is planned to continue through 2018. The study explores young people's decisions about their educational and job opportunities in rural northern New…

The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) is a comprehensive survey administered online to the arts alumni of participating institutions. Completion time for the survey is generally 20 to 30 minutes. The results described in this report are based on data collected from the 2011, 2012, and 2013 annual survey administrations. This report…