The Journal of Rural Social Sciences

This study sought to assign the parishes in Louisiana into distinctive spatial-temporal clusters based on their trends in HIV prevalence and percentages of households with severe housing problems and to assess the parish’s resilience and susceptibility to HIV infection given its pre- existing sociodemographic conditions. Results revealed that trends in the HIV prevalence rates and […]

Literature on small farms in the U.S. is limited though they are the most numerous farm type, generate over twenty percent of agricultural production, and are more likely to be operated by historically underserved (i.e., beginning, minority, veteran, women, young) farmers than large-scale farms. This article details an online survey study of small-scale agricultural producers […]

Recent wildlife agency efforts aimed at hunter recruitment, retention, and reactivation (R3) are examples of behavior change interventions. Therefore, these R3 programs and policies should be strategically designed to meet hunters’ goals and motivations. We analyzed survey responses (n=808) from North Carolina resident migratory bird hunters regarding potential Sunday hunting legalization to serve as an […]

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, anxiety disorders are a common mental health disorder but often remain undetected and undertreated. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Extension professionals have worked hard to address emerging issues that communities face, possibly impacting the amount of anxiety they experience. This study determined the prevalence of anxiety symptoms among […]

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent travel restrictions led to a worldwide increase in greenspace use. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encouraged policies including physical distancing and COVID-related signage. However, the extent to which these policies influenced behavior is unknown. To fill this gap, we report on a 2020 observational study at 14 […]

Rural individuals and places face major vulnerabilities in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, yet how and why rural residents adopted preventive behaviors as a result is not well understood. Using cross-sectional data from an online panel survey of Utahans along the rural-urban continuum collected in June of 2020, we find that, overall, rural Utahans were […]

Since late-2020, COVID-19 mortality rates have been higher in rural than in urban America, but there has also been substantial within-rural heterogeneity. Using CDC data, we compare COVID-19 mortality rates across the rural-urban continuum as well as within rural counties across different types of labor markets and by metropolitan adjacency. As of October 1, 2021, […]

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, case and death rates from the disease in rural counties were significantly lower than in urban counties. This pattern changed during the summer and fall of 2020, and by December, death rates in rural counties were higher than in urban counties. This article uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau […]

The COVID-19 pandemic alerted the U.S. populace to spatial patterns of health outcomes. Trusted sources of information such as the Johns Hopkins University and The New York Times mapped COVID-19 indicators at the county-level, bringing widespread attention to the timing and clustering of case rates, mortality, and vaccine uptake. The severity of the pandemic has […]