Salomon Alcocer Guajardo ’88 published two research articles on the application of count-based indices of variation. His article on age diversity in municipal departments was published in the Journal of Applied Quantitative Methods. His article on the application of count-based and probability-based indices of variation was published in the Journal of Statistics & Management Systems.

The first article applied two new count-based indices of variation to age data obtained for 71 New York City municipal departments for the year 2019. Guajardo’s count-based indices modified the Menhinick index of diversity by obtaining unstandardized and generalized scores that are compatible with the scores obtained with the Gleason and Margalef indices. In applying the new indices to the demographic data, Guajardo established the criteria for appropriately applying the count-based indices to municipal governments. The diversity scores obtained with the new indices were compared to the scores obtained with the count-based Gleason, Margalef and Menhinick indices. The generalized diversity score obtained with the new indices were also compared to the generalized scores obtained with the probability-based Simpson index of diversity. Statistically, the new count-based indices accounted for a greater amount of explained variance in comparison to the probability-based Simpson index.

In the second article, Guajardo developed generalized diversity scores for the count-based Gleason, Margalef and Menhinick indices of diversity. The generalized scores were assessed for construct validity and measurement reliability. The scores were also compared to the generalized scores obtained with the probability-based Simpson index of diversity. Consistent with the statistical results obtained in the first article, the count-based indices produced larger coefficients of determination in comparison to the Simpson index, meaning that the generalized Gleason, Margalef and Menhinick indices accounted for a larger percent of the explained variance in comparison to the Simpson index.