P2Rx Activity and Web Measures Report
July 1 – December 31, 2003
Report Prepared by: Jean Waters
January 31, 2004
The P2Rx centers engage in many “networking” activities and provide services that are funded by P2Rx funds and other leveraged fund sources. P2Rx funded activities and these leveraged activities are often interdependent and help P2Rx meet its organizational goals. The activity and web measures identified in this report are wholly or partially funded by P2Rx funds.
Each Regional Information Center is unique in terms of audience served, maturity of program, information model, and other factors. These differences make direct comparison of centers based solely or primarily on their statistics invalid. Thus, it should be emphasized that the primary intent of this report is to facilitate the national aggregation of measures describing the activities of the P2Rx network.
P2Rx adopted the standard for activity and web measurement September 26, 2002. This standard is designed to provide a better representation of the kinds of services P2Rx Centers provide. This standard closely defines where to track different activities and specifies “filters” used to record web statistics. These filters remove false activity from search engine “spiders” that index web pages. Our resultant numbers accurately reflect activity of “real users.” Also, as much as possible, individual P2Rx product usage is being tracked.
Activity Data, July – December, 2003
- The majority of people (about 60%) requesting technical assistance is
from government or industry. Technical assistance activity is considered to be any type of communication (personal, phone call, e-mail, etc.) where a request for information is made and the Center provides information. This measure represents the most direct contact Centers have with individuals. In this six-month period, over 2200 individuals received direct technical assistance. - Collectively, about 49% of technical assistance is provided within a
center’s region. This shows the strong reliance of regional technical assistance providers on their regional Center. International clients make up about 21% of clients overall, 27% are from outside the region but within the US, and 3% are internal – with another P2Rx center. Centers produced 30 newsletters and distributed over 14,000 copies to around 2700 individual readers. Some newsletters are electronic. Newsletters represent a “push” of information by the Centers. They provide promotion of P2, environmental news, information about activities, products, or services, and promote a sense of community. - List serve activity is strong with 58 list serves operating, reaching about 4,700 users. List serves are used by a variety of audiences, usually for fairly specific purposes. List serves expand the audience for P2 information to include professionals other than P2 technical assistance
providers. - Centers organized 18 meetings with attendance of over 800 people. These meetings were convened on a variety of topics, from regional roundtables to topical meetings with businesses.
- Web site use continues to be strong, with over 430,000 user sessions. For this six month report, filters continued to be used by each center, to eliminate activity from search engine “spiders” and from internal center use. The numbers compare favorably to the filtered numbers collected six months ago, when 414,000 filtered user sessions were reported. All centers reported web data. The usage of P2 Infohouse electronic library is traditionally reported separately because it’s on a different server. If Infohouse numbers are included in total user session numbers for all other sites, the total user sessions is about 800,000.
- The number of visitors that visit ten or more times was over 2,800. This measure was included to show the utility of the sites. This number has been filtered to exclude “false” activity from web “spiders” that index sites, and from internal use, so should be representative of real users who repeatedly use P2Rx web sites.
- The products and services offered by P2Rx include topic hubs, P2 Programs Directory, P2 News, Sector Resources, Libraries, and Other Products.
Other Products includes Homes Across America, Request for Proposals database, and Mercury Reduction Programs database. Libraries receive the highest web usage, illustrating the utility and history of internet libraries.
Data Trends
P2Rx now has six quarters of filtered web data. This data is not perfect, as some centers have been unable to report data every single time period due to computer or software problems. Still, trends show usage of the sites is stable.
The usage of libraries continues to be greatest. The number of user sessions for libraries includes North Carolina’s massive “P2 Infohouse.” Note that Infohouse user sessions are not counted with those reported by the Waste Reduction Resource Center (WRRC) as part of the overall P2Rx web statistics since the library is on a different server. If all the user sessions (for all web sites and libraries) are added together, the total user sessions are about 800,000. Four centers offer libraries and report their use as part of their web data.
Explanation of Data Measurements
The first table, Activity Measures, illustrates what types of organizations are served by the P2Rx Regional Centers, and where they are located. This table also illustrates other activities of the centers, newsletters, list serves, meetings and regional conference calls.
§ Technical assistance is a specific request for information (through a phone call, e-mail, in person, or other means) that is answered by the center. This type of assistance typically represents the most direct contact between a center and a user of P2 information.
§ Location of requests refers to the geographic location of the user that requested the information.
§ Other P2Rx Regional Center represents specific, technical requests that were answered by one center for another center.
§ Newsletters show the number of copies of newsletters that were distributed (electronically or hard copy) and the number issues produced.
§ List Serve Activity has the total number of e-mail messages that went on the list serve, the number of individual subscribers, and the number of individual list serves that are managed by P2Rx centers.
§ P2 Meetings/Workshops contains information about the number of meetings a center organized and the number of attendees at the meetings. Information is also provided about the number of meetings P2Rx people attended and promoted P2Rx in some way.
§ Regional Conference Calls are included to further capture some of the organization activities being done in each region by the P2Rx centers.
Web Measurement outlines the number of user sessions (visits) and the number of page impressions reported by the P2Rx Regional Centers. User sessions represent individual users that visit the site. Page impressions are representative of the number of web pages viewed or downloaded.
· All centers provided some breakdown of P2Rx products on their sites, however they weren’t all able to provide information in every category.
· The category “other products” includes Request for Proposals Database http://www.pprc.org/rfp/rfp.cfm, Mercury Reduction Programs Database http://www.newmoa.org/Newmoa/htdocs/prevention/mercury/programs/index.cfm, and Homes Across America http://peakstoprairies.org/Homes/.
Raw Data
| Activity Measures |
Quantity |
| Technical Assistance, Referrals and Contacts |
|
| Location of Requests |
|
| Within Region |
990 |
| Outside Region |
531 |
| International |
410 |
| Type of Organization (Tech. Assist. Requests) |
|
| Government |
825 |
| Business/Industry |
507 |
| Consultant |
71 |
| Educational Institution |
260 |
| Non-Profit |
181 |
| Individual |
333 |
| Other |
66 |
| Other P2Rx Regional Center |
56 |
| Newsletters |
|
| Distributed (all methods) |
14,260 |
| Newsletters Produced |
30 |
| List Serve Activity |
|
| Number of e-mails |
1,323 |
| Number of subscribers |
4,659 |
| Number of list serves |
58 |
| P2 Meetings/Workshops |
|
| Number of meetings organized |
18 |
| Number of Attendees at meetings organized |
845 |
| Number of meetings Center’s attended and talked about P2Rx network |
29 |
| Regional Conference Calls |
65 |
The P2Rx centers engage in many “networking” activities and provide services that are funded by P2Rx funds and other leveraged fund sources. P2Rx funded activities and these leveraged activities are often interdependent and help P2Rx meet its organizational goals. The activity and web measures identified in this report are wholly or partially funded by P2Rx funds.
| Web Measures |
P2Rx.org |
P2Rx & Centers |
| Number of user sessions |
15, 889 |
431,326 |
| Number of user sessions including libraries |
799,881 |
|
| Number of Page impressions |
38,354 |
1,150,325 |
| Number of Visitors who visit ten or more times |
136 |
2,786 |
| Number of user sessions for P2Rx products |
||
| Topic Hubs |
3,642 |
39,825 |
| P2 Programs Directory |
3,385 |
17,288 |
| News |
244 |
5,336 |
| Sector Resources |
563 |
55,642 |
| Libraries |
0 |
378,357 |
| Other products |
2,205 |
13,847 |
July 1 – December 31, 2003, is the eighth reporting period for the P2Rx Activity and Web Measures. Eight Regional P2Rx Centers reported measures for this period.