RETAIL SERVICE PATTERNS AND SMALL TOWN POPULATION CHANGE: A REPLICATION OF HASSINGER'S STUDY.

This study replicates work by Hassinger on service patterns and small town population change, here using villages in Wisconsin. A new retail service scale was constructed to meet possible shortcomings of Hassinger's scale, but high intercorrelations indicated his scale could be used. We found the low positive association between this scale and population change to be smaller than for the Minnesota data reported by Hassinger, and this difference could not be explained by certain differences in the universes studied. Size of center had a slightly higher association with population change than service scale, and this was sustained when the universe was grouped by service wale, although the association of service scale and change was negligible for all but the smallest centers when the universe was grouped by size. These results are evidence of a slight population concentration process, where larger centers and those small centers with more services are most likely to be growing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]