Citizen science projects provide a vast amount of biological data that can be used to model population trends of species. Robust statistical modeling techniques are necessary to account for multiple sources of bias inherent to the data. One such citizen science project, eBird, is an online database of avian checklist data entered by birdwatchers from discrete locations and visits. The eBird dataset may be large enough to fill information gaps left by other monitoring programs if biases in the data are modeled appropriately and if the models can be validated against reliable survey data. We compared eBird and North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) data from southern Ontario to determine if patterns in annual indices and long-term trends were similar for 22 species that reach the northern limit of their range in that region. Mixed-effects models were used to address varying observer skill and uneven geographic coverage in eBird, and the number of species per checklist was used as a covariate to represent effort and to accommodate historic lists lacking effort information. The average Pearson's correlation coefficient between eBird and BBS annual indices across species was 0.35, and the correlation between trends estimated from the annual indices was 0.72. eBird data generally agreed with BBS data with the exception of two common species that showed opposite trends, several species with low detection rates, and for two species with little long-term change in occurrence based on BBS data. Our results suggest that eBird data can be used to generate long-term trends that could complement data from traditional surveys, yet more work is needed to understand circumstances that lead to disagreement between eBird and other surveys. Utilisation des données eBird pour modéliser les tendances de populations d'espèces d'oiseaux migrateurs RÉSUMÉ. La participation citoyenne à des projets scientifiques concourt à amasser une grande quantité de données biologiques pouvant être utilisées pour modéliser les tendances de populations d'espèces. Des techniques de modélisation statistiquement robustes sont nécessaires afin de tenir compte des diverses sources de biais inhérents aux données. Projet scientifique à participation citoyenne, eBird est une base de données en ligne colligeant des listes d'oiseaux remplies par les ornithologues amateurs pour un site particulier et une visite précise. Le jeu de données eBird peut permettre de combler le manque d'information de certains programmes de surveillance si les biais associés aux données sont modélisés correctement et si les modèles sont validés avec des données d'inventaires fiables. Nous avons comparé des données provenant d'eBird et du Relevé des oiseaux nicheurs d'Amérique du Nord (BBS) pour le sud de l'Ontario afin de déterminer si les indices annuels et les tendances sur une longue période étaient similaires pour 22 espèces à la limite nord de leur aire de répartition. Nous avons utilisé des modèles à effets mixtes dans le but de corriger l'expérience variable des observateurs e...

Looping, a school structure where students remain with one group of teachers for two or more school years, is used by middle schools to meet the diverse needs of young adolescents. However, little research exists on how looping effects the academic performance of students. This study was designed to determine if looping influenced middle school students' mathematical academic achievement. Student scores on the Mississippi Curriculum Test (MCT) were compared between sixth and eighth grade years for 69 students who looped during the seventh and eighth grades with a group of 137 students who did not loop. Looping students achieved statistically significantly greater growth on the MCT than their nonlooping counterparts between sixth and eighth grades. Further, the data were disaggregated by gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Findings indicate that looping may academically reengage students during the middle school years. Advantages and disadvantages of looping at the middle grades are discussed.

This study adds to the existing research concerning ecological relationships between suicide rates, social integration, and urbanicity in the U.S.Age-sex-race adjusted five-year averaged suicide rates for 1993-1997 and various measures of urbanicity are used. Some proposed relationships held true, while others indicate that social integration and urbanicity are so intertwined in their effects on suicide that no clear, unidirectional pattern emerges. The religious affiliation measure captured unique variations in the role religion plays in this relationship; depending on how urbanicity was measured. Findings suggest closer attention needs to be paid to how both urbanicity and religious affiliation are measured. Overall, vast regional variation exists in suicide rates and the role of urbanization can be misunderstood if not properly specified.

Historic population trajectories for most North American bird species are largely unknown for years prior to circa 1970. Additionally, current estimates of population trajectories of boreal and Arctic breeding species are imprecise or biased because of lack of coverage by Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) routes in that region. Citizen science data, in particular eBird data, could fill these information gaps. Bayesian regression models of eBird data were used to estimate population trajectories of 22 boreal or Arctic breeding species of songbirds, 4 migratory songbird species that breed in eastern North America, and 2 species of raptors whose populations crashed due to the pesticide DDT. Models used range-wide data from the U.S. and Canada for spring migration/breeding, fall migration, and winter. To evaluate the model results, comparisons were made between eBird models from different seasons, between eBird indices and area defoliated by spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana), and between eBird, BBS, and Christmas Bird Count (CBC) annual indices and trends. Population trajectories were positively correlated between seasons for most of the species analyzed based on correlations between annual indices, magnitude of trends, and residuals from trend models. Of the species analyzed, those most often associated with spruce budworm outbreaks had the strongest correlations between eBird annual indices and area defoliated by spruce budworm in the boreal forest. Annual indices from eBird models were positively correlated with BBS for most species, and trends calculated through the annual indices from eBird models were strongly correlated with those from the BBS for spring

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