• politics and economics of communities and regions
• changes in social indicators over time, and their sociological causes
• social theory and its practical applications
• research methods and analytic techniques for examining such issues

My applied research program focuses generally on topics in local policy leadership and analysis, including economic development (Eberts and Hart, 1999) and social indicators (Eberts and Merschrod, 2004), as well as the social theoretical backgrounds for these studies (Eberts, 1998). These studies deal with concerns of many policymakers in counties as well as in these counties' smaller communities.

Smaller rural communities have special problems in measuring and influencing their levels of economic development, and cross-roads studies of commercial and public services help them formulate these measures more accurately (Eberts et al., 1996, 1999, 2000a, b). The regularity of common patterns of services in smaller rural communities of different counties gives further support for the viability of this form of measurement (Eberts, 2002), and gives policymakers some directions for how they might cope with generating more such services.

Leaders in some counties also have difficulty recognizing their comparative advantages or disadvantages, and social indicator analysis over time (Eberts, 2004) helps them in this endeavor. Some of the troublesome trends identified include the severe downsizing of certain industries generated by the computerized economic restructuring of many industries during the 1990s, continuing upward trajectories in births to single mothers, in the stagnant trends in reducing child poverty, and in deaths due to lung cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, accidents, and strokes among New York's rural counties that have the lowest-density populations. These trends also concern policymakers in these counties, but whose budget priorities are often constrained by the smaller dollar resource bases in these counties.

The application of social theory to local issues was explored in Eberts (1998), and in Eberts, et al. (2000c). Sociological human ecology focuses on analysis of sub-national and sub-state systems like communities and their surrounding regions. According to human-ecology theory and empirical support for it, to be viable these systems use the demographic, organizational, technological, and natural resources available to them in their regional settings for resolving their "social system problems" of increasing production, just allocation of resources, transparent democratic control structures, and the equitable servicing of their populations in terms, especially, of education and health (Eberts, 1998). Systems that do not undertake self-conscious problem-solving processes for approaching these issues are less likely to be sustainable into the longer run. Moreover, certain practitioners concerned with international development can be identified who use these types of approaches (Eberts, et al., 2000c), and whose value-systems are consistent with the ethics systems in contrast to the spiritual systems in Western historical traditions.

• Ph.D. 1963 University of Michigan (Sociology)
• M.A. 1958 University of Michigan (Sociology)
• B.D. 1956 College & University Ministry, Yale University, The Divinity School
• A.B. 1953 Philosophy and Classics, Heidelberg College