| Abstract: | The overall purpose of this study was to develop and test a method that can be used for constructing improved standards in statewide comprehensive outdoor recreation planning. Relevant standards are those used to compare outdoor recreation opportunities with participation, for various kinds of outdoor recreation, in assessing the outdoor recreation needs of a state. The specific objectives of the research included: outlining the principal techniques that are used to develop standards in the state outdoor recreation planning (SCORP) process; describing characteristics of the SCORP standards methodology now used; developing an alternative method to determine state comprehensive outdoor recreation planning standards; applying of this method by the use of field data from Colorado; and evaluating the alternative method. The method developed uses field data collected during the statewide inventory of outdoor recreation opportunities. Data include information on season length and on daily use capacity from each functional element of the nearly 5,000 park and recreation areas inventoried. Analysis includes the calculation of statistical means among these data, and evaluation of these statistical means by use of standard deviations. Statewide means are examined, followed by examination of means calculated after extreme data are removed, if necessary, and finally subsets of statewide data may be examined. |
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