What Are Three Problems In Your County That Need Solved?

Click here to view/download a high res version of the above image.

"Strategies for Economic Improvement in Appalachia's Distressed Rural Counties" is a comprehensive report from the University of Tennessee's Community Partnership Center, commissioned and published by the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) to "[challenge] confronting economic and community development efforts in rural Appalachian communities and [explain] the ways local governments, agencies, and community organizations plan and respond to challenging issues."

Part of its qualitative research included written surveys with participants in the ten-county sample. "[S]urvey questions asked for one-word or short-phrase responses to describe the local culture and conditions. Such brief, open-ended questions enabled survey participants to succinctly express local conditions from a unique local perspective, all of which provided powerful feedback for the research." The authors used word clouds to create a useful visual overview of the issues directly facing community development across a broad geographical range in the region. The full report features a number of additional word clouds taken from these surveys, including clouds that are specific to the individual counties.