STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: A SUGGESTED MODEL FOR PROGRAM EVALUATION

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STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: A SUGGESTED MODEL FOR PROGRAMEVALUATIONAuthor(s): ROBERT BLAIRSource: Public Administration Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 3 (FALL, 1998), pp. 331-348Published by: SPAEFStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40862324 .

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STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR ECONOMIC

DEVELOPMENT: A SUGGESTED MODEL

FOR PROGRAM EVALUATION

ROBERT BLAIR University or Nebraska at Umaha

INTRODUCTION

Strategic planning and economic development have been widely discussed and debated in the scholarly and practitioner literature of public administration. There are several reasons for this attention. Economic development has become one of the important emerging domestic policy areas in recent years (Luke et al, 1989; Eisinger, 1988). In addition to the vital nature of its policy, economic development is significant to public administration because its implementation increasingly involves the use of entrepreneurial methods (Clarke and Gaile, 1992), often requiring complex interactions between government and business. This partnership of the public and private sectors affects the manner in which public policy is developed and programs delivered (Kettl, 1993).

Strategic planning, on the other hand, has been widely discussed because it is an innovative and flexible planning technology. One of its applications is the identification of public policy alternatives. The increased use of strategic planning methods appears to be altering the way public administrators approach planning problems and policy formulation.

Economic development and strategic planning have also been examined jointly. When the two topics are linked, as in this symposi- um, the result is a widely-used method by communities and organizations to select specific economic development initiatives and alternatives. Economic development and strategic planning, either indi- vidually or in combination, have become an integral part of the study and practice of public administration especially on the state and local level. While the merging of economic development implementation and strategic planning appears to be a highly workable approach to the practice of public administration, another component, however,



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is required to complete the picture of public administration and public policy.

The implementation of programs like economic development and the use of planning methods like strategic planning are only two phases of public administration's function in the policy process. Denhardt (1995:239), for example, identifies an "important and recurring cycle for public managers" in the development and delivery of public policy. The third composition of Denhardt's cycle is program evaluation. Planning, implementation, and evaluation repre- sent the complete cycle of public administration according to Denhardt: planning for programs; putting them into action; and assessing their success.

While strategic planning and economic development have been successfully linked as an application of public administration, program evaluation is often the neglected part and is needed to complete the cycle. In fact, evaluation seems to be the forgotten element in many discussions of public administration and the policy process (see Skok, 1995, for an example).

This article suggests a structured and systematic role for program evaluation in the strategic planning of economic development. The research question in this article, involving the full cycle of public administration described by Denhardt, focuses on a specific public policy area: economic development. How can strategic planning techniques be used with program evaluation methods to assess more accurately the outcomes of an economic development program? Denhardt's description of the cycle of public administration provides the conceptual framework for this inquiry. Planning, implementation, and evaluation are examined simultaneously and are seen as connected elements of the public administration cycle rather than separate segments, as is often the practice. A holistic approach to public administration research, then, is used in this article.

The basic plan is to merge some concepts oF local economic development policy and strategic planning methods within a framework of program implementation and evaluation. A goal of this article is to build on Denhardt's foundational model of the "cycle of public administration" and suggest a method of approach that practitioners and researchers can use to evaluate the implementation of a multifaceted economic development programs formulated by a strategic planning process.

Several issues, critical to a discussion of linking program evaluation methods to strategic planning and economic development, are



FAQ FALL 1998 (333)

included in this article. It begins with a brief description of how and why economic development and strategic planning are linked. Next is a discussion of the assessment of the effectiveness of economic development policies and why it is especially important in rural communities. An outline of the basic issues involved in program evaluation follows with a suggestion for a basic evaluation framework for economic development. Strategic planning methods, it is shown, constitute critical parts of this framework. Building on this program evaluation framework, a practical model for evaluating economic development is proposed. In the next section of this article, an illustrative case study shows how the evaluation model can be applied in more than 30 Nebraska communities. Finally, policy implications for practitioners are discussed and additional research suggested.

LINKING DEVELOPMENT AND PLANNING

One explanation of the initiation of the link between strategic planning and economic development is based on changes taking place in the federal system of government. American federalism is characterized by changing interpretations of the nature of the relationship between the national government and state governments. As intergovernmental relations (IGR) continue to evolve, key terms have been coined to describe the current interpretation of federalism (Wright, 1988).

Devolution is a term summarizing the current interpretation of this variety of "new" federalism highlighted by Reagan's move to "turnback" federal policy authority to the states (Denhardt, 1995:81). Devolution is the slow but continuous movement by the executive and legislative branches of the national government, supported by judicial interpretations, to shift the responsibilities for more and more public policy areas to other (primarily lower) levels of government.

Even though Wright (1988) does not use the term devolution to depict the current phase of IGR, a related term is employed. Wright uses contraction to describe American intergovernmental relations since 1980. Contraction, for example, is evident in the constriction of federal funding and the concentration of authority at the state, rather the local level, in terms of policy authority. Contraction of federal responsibility in some policy areas is one of the results of devolution.



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Many, but not all, domestic policy areas are affected by this apparent devolution of the federal system. These policy areas include health care, transportation, criminal justice, social services, economic development, and housing and community development, just to name a few. Devolution has affected the responsibility for policy development in these policy areas in different ways.

In the economic development policy area, for example, the dramatic effects of devolution are plainly seen. States are assuming greater control over and more discretionary authority in the management and improvement of their economies (Bartik, 1991). There is much less federal support in the late 1990s than in the 1980s for creating, attracting, and retaining jobs and private investment in state economies. It is no surprise, therefore, that economic development has in just a few years become one of the more important policy areas in the states of the U.S. partly because of the withdrawal of federal involvement (Bowman and Kearney, 1985; Eisinger, 1988; Gray and Jacob, 1996).

The devolution of economic development not only includes the shifting of responsibility from Washington to the state capitals but, in many states, the devolution of this policy responsibility is being fur- ther extended to local governments. With limited resources and sporadic technical support from state governments, local officials are increasingly given the major task of developing their own economies. The importance of local economic development is evident in the growing abundance of the academic research and practical guidance literature (Blakely, 1994; Blair, 1995).

Implementation of economic development programs on the local level is a complex undertaking. Public-private partnerships are often involved in program delivery. Regardless of the participation by the private sector, most local economic development policies are delivered by, or greatly financed through, the local governmental authori- ties (Bingham, Hill, and White, 1990). Because of the high level of public sector funding, therefore, it is important to dispense local economic development programs and services in an efficient and responsive manner and this is where public administration is involved. Good program implementation is based on a number of critical administrative practices. Good planning and preparation, prior to implementation (the first two phases of Denhardt's cycle), is one of the more important determinants of program delivery success. A number of planning methods have been used by administrators.



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Strategic planning has become one of the more innovative and popular planning techniques to emerge recently. In fact, strategic planning is the specific planning technique described in the planning section of Denhardt's (1995) popular basic public administration text. Public administrators quickly adopted strategic planning methods as a way to deal with a number of the devolved policy areas of which economic development is one (Eisinger, 1988).

The methods of strategic planning are characterized by a common approach. Most students of strategic planning (Bryson, 1995; Koteen, 1989; Sorkin, Ferris, and Hudak, 1984) agree that the process consists of some variation of the following sequential steps: 1) Mission statement or goal identification; 2) Review of external and internal environments also known as the environmental scan and SWOT analysis (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats); 3) Establishment of priority strategies and action steps; 4) Implementa- tion of action plan and evaluation of results.

It is important to note that the final step of the strategic planning process includes tasks for evaluating results. While some texts on strategic planning provide detailed guidance for evaluating the projects and programs that come out of the strategic planning process, most discussions on evaluation take a different approach and usually focus on assessing the responsiveness or usefulness of the planning process itself rather than measuring the effectiveness of the outcomes of the activities that were identified by the planning participants. Nutt and Backoff (1992), for example, do not include a major section on evaluation in their text on strategic management and implementation.

Notwithstanding the apparent limited role of program evaluation in strategic planning and management, the growth and refinement of strategic planning methods and the emergence of local economic development policy and programming occurred almost simultaneously. The two topics seemed to have a natural connection and eventually merged in part as the effect of devolution increased the importance of community-based development initiatives. By the early 1990s, the efforts of a number of states experimenting with programs that delivered strategic planning for local economic development had been documented (Jenne, Lundy, and Kitchen, 1988; Fladeland, 1991; Reed and Blair, 1993; Walzer et al, 1995).

While overall there has been support for the linking of economic development and strategic planning, there has also been some criti- cism, a persistent one being that it concentrates on the rationality



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of the planning process rather than on producing outcomes (Reed, Reed, and Luke, 1987; Swanstrom, 1987). In other words, does strategic planning result in effective local economic development policy outcomes?

Likewise, critical issues concerned with the outcomes of strategic planning, management, and implementation of economic development policy are raised in this article. Namely, how can policy-makers and administrators determine if an economic development program is achieving its objectives in a community? How can strategic planning be used to improve program evaluation of economic development? As local governments become more involved in economic development implementation and strategic planning, the need for better and more systematize evaluation methods is apparent.

EVALUATION AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT

While the assessment of the effectiveness of public policy is a task that all good administrators should attempt to undertake (after all, it is the third phase of the "public administration cycle"), the evaluation of economic development policy is especially important to rural community efforts. Rural communities, in particular, because of their reliance on volunteers for program implementation, their limited range of development options resulting from their narrow existing economic base, and their declining and aging population base, need to use their economic development resources wisely (Blair and Reed, 1995).

Because of their dire need for efficiency in their program delivery, therefore, small and rural communities have extensively applied strategic planning techniques to target their local economic development efforts. Strategic planning is useful to small towns because it helps localities organize and implement their economic development programs "in a more focused, efficient way in a highly competitive environment" (Eisinger, 1988:29). Evaluation is the next logical step to help ensure that these targeted rural economic development efforts and resources are not wasted.

While the variety and sophistication of community-based economic development initiatives and programs have expanded and the methods of strategic planning approach have improved, especially in terms of its expanded and extensive participatory components, there still appears to be a lack of attention in the area of program evaluation of economic development. With a few exceptions (Hatry et al,



FAQ FALL 1998 (337)

1990), there is little guidance to practitioners on how to measure the outcomes of local economic development. In particular, not enough applied research has been devoted to advancing the methods of identifying successful local and community planning efforts in economic development and evaluating the development programs resulting from strategic planning efforts. This article hopefully moves that research forward.

Most efforts at evaluating the effectiveness of local economic development programs (including those using strategic planning approaches) are based on the final end-product of the policy inter- vention: employment statistics (Thompson, 1983); Steinnes, 1990; Gruidl and Walzer, 1992). These evaluations take a micro or narrow approach: how many jobs in the community have been created or retained in the private sector economy as the result of economic development programs?

Other literature suggests that a macro, wider or community- based approach is also needed in the evaluation of the effectiveness of local economic development (John, Batie, and Norris, 1988; Green et al., 1990). Economic development is not just the creation of jobs; it also includes the nurturing of an environment conducive to private (and public) investment in a community. While jobs are often the most visible aspect of a local economic development program, the putting together of the program is a long-term undertaking involving active participation from a wide range of local citizens, officials, business people, and others. This is where strategic planning is best coupled with economic development. Evaluation should be used to assess all aspects of a local economic development program, not just the number of jobs saved, created or attracted.

What is needed, therefore, before undertaking efforts to measure economic development "success" by focusing on employment data, is a discussion of program evaluation. Following is an outline of the basic elements of program evaluation, providing a framework for its application to economic development policy. Strategic planning methods provide the essential elements to the framework for evaluating economic development policy.

A STRATEGIC PLANNING FRAMEWORK

Program evaluation is defined as "the measurement of program performance-resource expenditure, program activities, and program outcomes-and the testing of causal assumptions linking these three



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elements" (Wholey, 1994:15). In other words, there is a need to evaluate several aspects of the program: the administrative process of program implementation; the economic efficiency of program delivery; and the social effects resulting from the program itself or finding out what it actually accomplished. These evaluation tasks are often broken down into two fundamental types of program evaluation approaches: process evaluation and outcome evaluation.

Process evaluation is "concerned with the extent to which a particular policy or program is implemented according to its stated guidelines or intent" (Nachmias, 1980:4). This type of evaluation is focused on the administrative process itself: examining how efficient- ly the program has been implemented; observing the nature of program activities; and scrutinizing the level of resources used in implementation. Much evaluation research is focused on process evaluation. Researchers may say they are examining the outcomes of programs but they are actually measuring the satisfaction of recipi- ents regarding the delivery process of the programs. This is often the case in economic development evaluation manuals which extensively use a "client-based assessment of performance" (Hatry et al., 1990:2).

Outcome evaluation is more difficult to do than process evaluation. Also known as program impact assessment, outcome evaluation is "concerned with assessing the effects of policies ... [and] the extent to which a policy has achieved its stipulated objectives" (Nachmias, 1980:5). In this approach there is measurement of the results of the policy. Outcome evaluation is based on concepts of causality: the outcomes need to be significantly caused by or result from the implementation of the policy. Most outcome evaluations of economic development policy tend to take a narrow approach to assessing program results, focusing on measuring employment levels. While this is useful research, these outcome evaluations are too narrow, only looking at part of the possible consequences of local economic development policies.

This article focuses on an evaluation model that is based on assessing outcomes of specific economic development programs. And, when the evaluations of these various specific programs are put together, an overall assessment of the total local economic development effort is achieved.

From a few classic and popular texts on the topic (Weiss, 1972; Nachmias, 1980; Rossi and Freeman, 1993), it is possible to draft a basic program outcome evaluation model. An evaluation analyst completes the following key steps in sequential order:



FAQ FALL 1998 (339)

1. Identify program goals. The analyst determines the intent of the program. Usually this is a difficult task and sometimes an impos- sible one. Next, the analyst formulates criteria based on program goals which will later be used to judge program effectiveness.

2. Develop evaluation research design. At this stage, the analyst devises a plan for collecting data, ensuring that the design measures the cause-effect relationship between program and outcome. Ideally, research designs should be experimental or quasi-experimental but non-experimental designs are often used. An important part of the research design is developing indicators to measure relevant program activities.

3. Measure program outputs and activities. Working from the research design, the analyst collects the data (usually program outputs and activities) at this step in the process. The data, of course, provide the substance for making judgments regarding program outcomes.

4. Estimate effect of program outcomes. At the final step, the analyst examines the data; program outputs are compared with program goals (as measured by criteria). When program outputs are evaluated against criteria, the analyst determines how well the program outcomes are met, estimating the overall effectiveness of the program.

While the basic program outcome evaluation model follows more or less the generally accepted social science research model, there is a very important difference between the two processes in terms of the function of the research question. In both approaches, the research question drives and holds together the overall research process. The social science researcher usually has considerable flexibility in drafting the nature and scope of the question. Research questions in program outcome evaluations are much less flexible and the scope is already determined: use program criteria to make comparisons to determine program effectiveness. Without reliable and valid program criteria to make comparisons, evaluation research loses much of its meaning. This is important because "all impact [or outcome] assessments are comparative" (Rossi and Freeman, 1993:217).

AN EVALUATION MODEL

Theoretically, the basic program outcome evaluation model should be applicable to any public policy or program. Local economic development is no exception. When strategic planning methods



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are used to draft a local program there are some built-in advantages to program outcome evaluation. Strategic planning plays a critical role in the program evaluation model for local economic development: provide criteria to serve as standards for evaluating and measuring program outputs and outcomes. It is not necessary, therefore, for the analyst to formulate evaluation criteria from fuzzy or conflicting program goals.

The basic program evaluation model is modified for assessing economic development policy in a number of ways. To begin the evaluation, the analyst needs first to obtain the economic development action plan formulated by a strategic planning process and then do the following:

1. Identify specific economic development program goals. The analyst determines which economic development alternative or strategy is to be evaluated. Usually, 4 to 5 major activities are included as priorities in a strategic action plan. Goals for each alternative are identified by the analyst from the plan. This should not be a difficult task because most economic development action plans, resulting from a strategic planning process, contain goals and objectives for each priority.

2. Select economic development program criteria. Next the analyst selects the appropriate evaluative criteria based on the goals for the particular action plan strategy or priority. Criteria will later be used to judge program effectiveness for this particular development priority. The nature of the criteria will depend, of course, on the particular type of economic development strategy that is being evaluated. An entrepreneurial development strategy, for instance, may have criteria of number of new businesses started while business expansion and retention strategy may have criteria of number of jobs saved or added.

3. Formulate evaluation research design. While experiments or quasi-experiments are generally the best research designs for evaluating work because of their internal validity (e.g., establishing causality), in many cases they are impractical or too expensive. Non- experimental designs or other types of qualitative research approaches like case studies, observation or interviews, are often used in outcome evaluation research. An important part of any research design is the development of reliable indictors to measure relevant program activities. It is much easier to develop good indicators if clear and concise program goals and objectives are available.

4. Measure program activities. The research design provides a



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framework for the analyst to collect data consisting of a number of indicators or program outputs and activities. Since the strategic planning process through the environmental scan and SWOT analysis helped the community focus its efforts, the economic development priorities should be fairly clear and precise. Data collection and measurement for program evaluation should be easier in a program formulated by strategic planning.

5. Estimate the overall effect of program outcomes. With strategic planning methods helping focus program goals and identifying meaningful evaluative criteria, the final step, where data are ana- lyzed and compared with program criteria, should be straightforward and relatively easy to determine if program outcomes and goals meet and simple to estimate the overall effectiveness of the program. Another advantage of using strategic planning for evaluation research is the ability to pinpoint the temporal order necessary to establish the cause-and-effect relationship between program and outcome. The plan is usually the starting point.

Of course, the viability of the program outcome evaluation model for local economic development depends greatly on the quality of the strategic planning process used to formulate the local action plan. The usefulness of the action plan's priority goals and objectives and program criteria to the outcome evaluation project is a function of many factors, most importantly the clarity and detail of the action plan itself as well as the nature of the local planning body, the skills of planning facilitators, the sophistication of the strategic planning program, etc.

CASE STUDY ILLUSTRATION

Naturally, the best way to determine if the program outcome evaluation model for local economic development, as described above, actually works is to test it in the field. While the evaluation model provides only the rudimentary elements of a local economic development evaluation model, there is still sufficient substance to the model to apply it to an illustrative case study which, of course, is only the first step to testing the viability of the outcome evaluation model. In this article, an actual program serves as the case study for the preliminary testing.

Case Study. From 1989 to 1993 the University of Nebraska at Omaha, in cooperation with a number of state agencies and public organizations, delivered a comprehensive strategic planning program



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for local economic development to more than thirty communities in Nebraska. The program, known as START (Strategic Training And Resource Targeting) Economic Development, was the result of a collaborative effort between the state university and the Nebraska Department of Economic Development. Several initial strategic planning interventions from 1986 to 1989 in a number of rural communities in the state provided the testing for the development of START. This strategic planning program "is a self-help, community- based approach to economic development that assists local leaders in developing a strategic plan to improve the local economy" (Blair and Reed, 1995:35). START has been evaluated with other strategic planning programs (Reed and Blair, 1993; Walzer et al, 1995).

The primary function of the action plan, the main document and product resulting from the strategic planning process, is to provide a road map for community programming in economic development. The implementation of the community's economic development priorities is guided by the action plan formulated by a broad-based group of local citizens and leaders.

Another critical function of the plan, it is argued, is to provide key information for a program outcome evaluation model for local economic development. Communities need to be able to assess the success of their economic development efforts and this article maintains that strategic planning provides the necessary framework. Therefore, the nature and content of seventeen action plans in the case example will be examined to determine if strategic planning methods yield the foundation for the proposed evaluation outcome model. A logical beginning to the analysis is to look at the types of economic development priorities contained in those plans.

A practical way to determine the usefulness of action plans to the program evaluation model is to classify the types of development priorities and activities selected by the community participants in the plans. A two-step content analysis and nominal group method was used to sort and categorize the separate 249 development activities contained in the seventeen action plans. The resultant categories were then ranked by the number of times the strategies were included in the separate action plans. An examination of the nature and conciseness of these 10 development categories tells us if the strategic planning process facilitates the identification of economic development alternatives that lend themselves to the creation of measurable criteria that can be used for evaluating the effectiveness of program outcomes. The identification of evaluative criteria in the



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TABLE I PRIORITY ACTION PLAN STRATEGIES

Action No. of Communities Strategy Selecting Strategy

(n=17)

1 . Community Image/ Attitude/Appearance 1 5

2. Retail/Main Street Development 14

3 . Improve Community and Public Service 13

4. Recreation Development 12 5. Local Development

Organization 12 6. Existing Business

Assistance 11 7. Community Promotion 9 8 . Development Finances

and Resources 9 9. Business Attraction 8 10. Tourism 8 11. Housing 7 12. New Business

Development 6 1 3 . Infrastructure

Development 6 14. Area Cooperation 5 15. Education Improvement 5 16. Leadership Development 4 17. Transportation 4 18. Health Care Improvement 3 19. Work Force Development 3

Source: Blair and Reed, 1995: 44



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action plans is, of course, a key concept in the program evaluation model for local economic development.

Table 1 is a ranking of the priority local action strategies for the seventeen community plans. Overall, it appears that strategic planning processes facilitate the identification by community participants of development strategies that are fairly specific in their goals and objectives. In other words, the economic development action strategies are precise. For each of these strategy categories, therefore, it is possible to identify or develop criteria that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the outcomes of the strategies.

Action strategy number 1, community image/attitude/appearance, provides a good illustration of the ease in identifying evaluation criteria. For example, community surveys, the judgment of outside evaluators (like state officials), and the results of participation in statewide community improvement programs should be fairly reliable and valid criteria for measuring the effectiveness of efforts to improve the image, attitudes or appearances of a community. Also, it should be fairly easy to evaluate the success of retail or main street development, the second most popular action strategy, by using criteria like retail sales, number or type of establishments, traffic counts, etc.

Evaluating an existing business assistance strategy (number 6) should also be easy. Criteria measures could include surveys of business owners or managers and measures of growth in employment, capital investment or physical expansions. Likewise, criteria for assessing housing development strategies (number 11) would include building permit data, zoning requests, new subdivisions, etc. It appears that, with a little work, reliable evaluation criteria could be identified or developed for most of these action strategies listed in Table 1.

Naturally for some of the local action strategies, like retail development or existing business development, it will be easier to develop quantifiable criteria than strategies like improve community and public service or community promotion which have longer range and more qualitative goals and objectives. However, with the employment of easy-to-use research methods like surveys, interviews, existing data, and focus group discussions, most strategies should be measurable.

The general nature of the local action strategies as shown in Table 1 demonstrates how easy it should be to develop measurable criteria for the program outcome evaluation model. Many of the



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"traditional" economic development strategies included in the case study plans, like business attraction, new business formation, existing business assistance, and local development, are readily quantifiable as evaluation criteria. However, community development strategies focusing on broader public issues that attempt to improve the quality of life, like recreation, health care, and education, are understand- ably harder to quantify. At the same time, some of the community development strategies shown in Table 1 focus on improving the community infrastructure, like transportation, housing, and community services, and these strategies may be a little easier to quantify.

Table 1 shows that three of the five highest ranked strategies were not focused on specific economic development activities but rather on broader activities relating more to community development. Rather than focus on business issues, the focus was on community issues. The top-ranked and the number three strategy have a community development concentration as does recreation development. But most of the remaining "top ten" local action strategies have an economic development theme and these are likely easier to quantify. In general, however, it appears that, when the local action strategies selected by communities participating in a strategic planning programs are categorized, measurable criteria for most of the strategy categories can be realistically developed to evaluate their effectiveness.

At least as demonstrated by the Nebraska START program, it can be said that strategic planning helps facilitate program outcome evaluation. Reasonable and reliable evaluative criteria were identified for the strategies selected by communities in this particular strategic planning program.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

It has been argued that strategic planning methods provide the essential framework for the evaluation of program outcomes. Evalu- ation can be more easily accomplished because strategic planning selects specific economic development strategies that in many cases are more easily quantified, thus measurable, and therefore evaluated. Criteria, a critical part of outcome evaluation research, therefore, is identified by the strategic planning processes. It was hypothe- sized that strategic planning for economic development provides sufficient information for formulating effective and workable program evaluation schemes. The brief case study illustration shows the



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hypothesis to be accurate. While this article focused on a single public program, economic

development, the fundamental evaluation approach should be applicable to any program developed by strategic planning methods. Other case study research in other policy areas is needed to see if the evaluation model works. Granted this article did not resolve the persistent research question of does local economic development policy really work. A program outcome evaluation framework for assessing specific economic development alternatives, when strategic planning methods are used, was outlined and briefly tested.

NOTES

1. This section is based in part on data collected on action plans for Blair and Reed, 1995.

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