QUALITIES OF LIFE, CAPE GIRARDEAU; SPECIAL REPORT: SOCIAL/NATURAL ENVIRONMENT; STATISTICS ATTEMPT MEASURE OF CITY'S SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT

Measuring a community's social environment is not easy. It is particulary difficult in a city the size of Cape Girardeau, where the population is too small for many trends to be meaningful.

Many statistics used by by the Chamber of Commerce's Quality of Life Committe fall in this category.

For example, the chamber chose the statistic for tobacco-exposed newborns per 1,000 live births. The statewide figure has been going down. The county figure jumps around, but, until 1995 was always lower than the state's.

But with the county averaging less than 800 births a year, the sample is too small to be statistically significant, said Jerrell Driver, consultant for ASSIST, a state-supported group that works on smoking-related policies.

That's why the state, which has more than 70,000 births a year, can show a trend.

Another problem statistic is violent deaths to teens. The Missouri Department of Health includes all deaths to anyone from 15- to 19-years-old from homicide, suicide or accident in this category.

From 1990 to 1995 in Cape Girardeau County, the number varied from a high of six in 1991 to a low of one in 1992.

One car accident could be the difference in mapping out a graph to track violent deaths.

It's even harder to draw conclusions when homicides and suicides are isolated. According to the Missouri Department of Health, in 1995, no teens died from homicides in Cape Girardeau County, while one committed suicide.

Live births to mothers ages 15 to 19 per 1,000 births is another questionable statistic.

"That age cohort is problematical," said Peter Hirschberg, chairman of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Southeast Missouri State University.

Sex with a 19-year-old is legal, while sex with a 15-year-old isn't, for example. A 19-year-old could be a married high-school graduate with a job and medical benefits, while a 15-year-old can't even legally drop out of high school.

In addition, the statistic compares the number of births to teen to the total number of births. If the birth rate for older women goes down, and the birth rate for teen-agers goes down, but not as much, then it appears that teen pregancy is rising when it isn't.

A more meaningful statistic would be what percentage of a younger cohort of teen-age girls -- say 12- to 17-year-olds -- give birth, Hirschberg said.

Doug Groesbeck, who was on the committe that decided on the indicators to use, said many of the categories were chosen just because they were used in Jacksonville, which has been evaluating community indicators for years.

Jacksonville, a city of more than 635,000 in 1990, is more likely to yield statistically significant samples than Cape Girardeau.

Noting that this is the first time the chamber tried this project, Groesbeck said, "We're looking for a lot of improvements (in the indicators) in the future."