paper deals with the quality and completeness of both the sociodemographic and the biomedical data for three years of births (1975)(1976)(1977) From the point of view of interpreting natality data, an important finding is that those records with missing or erroneous information are not randomly distributed among all births. Instead, reporting problems appear to be associated with those groups considered to be at high risk of potential infant health problems-that is, births among the young, the unmarried, and races other than White.David suggests a number of approaches that might be used to improve the quality of natality data. For example, he recommends that birth records with values that are judged to be unrealistic be checked for errors and that feedback be routinely provided to the reporting hospitals on the quality of their data.While David examines a single file of vital statistics data for completeness and internal consistency, the paper by Frost and Shy compares information from two different files for the same items. Frost and Shy examined the race classification in the birth and death files of Washington State for infants who die within their first year of life. The quality of this information is, of course, crucial for the study of racial differentials in infant mortality.Frost and Shy found discrepancies in the classification of race between the birth and death files for the same infant. In general, the results are consistent with those of previous studies on this subject.4 Where discrepancies do occur between the race recorded at birth and at death, there is a tendency for the infant to be reported as White on the death certificate. In addition, discrepancies are proportionately greater for infant deaths in numerically small racial groups, such as American Indians, Chinese, Japanese, and Hawaiians.

This study was designed to investigate school principals’ perceptions on school public relations in five areas: community demographics, parental involvement, internal and external communications, school council issues, and community resources. Findings indicated that principals’ concerns were as follows: rapid population growth, change of community demographics, status of school–community relationships, insufficient parental support of education, communication with parents, and school council functions. Principals understood that students could not achieve without family support. Principals also recognized that they could make a difference in strategically planning to work with parents and other key community members to foster a positive environment for student learning.

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