Forensic Science Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 189 forensic science schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 182 forensic science schools have some social media presence, having accounts on at least one of the three major social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Of the schools that have a social media presence, the greatest number, almost 93% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 69.3% of the 189 forensic science schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 10.6% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.3%), black (5.3%) and yellow (4.2%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on forensic science school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest forensic science schools in the nation, are as follows:

1. Miami Dade College: white 10% and blue 2.9%
2. University of Central Florida: white 46% and black 1.6%
3. Texas A & M University - College Station: white 15% and grey 6.9%

Font

The largest number, nearly 48.1%, of forensic science school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on forensic science school websites include Verdana (23.8%) and Tahoma (7.9%).

The largest forensic science school's websites use the following fonts:

1. Miami Dade College: Arial
2. University of Central Florida: Arial
3. Texas A & M University - College Station: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 138 forensic science schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 152 YouTube channel subscribers. The forensic science schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Pennsylvania State University - Main Campus: 2,357 subscribers
2. University of Central Florida: 1,559 subscribers
3. West Virginia University: 1,555 subscribers

Exactly 153 forensic science schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 1,516 Twitter account followers. The forensic science schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Texas A & M University - College Station: 19,518 followers
2. Saint Leo University: 14,978 followers
3. West Virginia University: 10,568 followers

Web Metrics

Although all forensic science schools have websites, only about 24% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 76.2% of forensic science school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The forensic science schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Southern Utah University: 2,249 broken links
2. University of New Haven: 1,665 broken links
3. University of Central Missouri: 1,421 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on forensic science school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The forensic science school websites with the cleanest websites, i.e., least number of HTML and CSS validation errors are:

1. Pima Community College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Miami Dade College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The forensic science school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. University of Nebraska - Lincoln: 0 HTML validation errors; 420 CSS validation errors
2. Shawnee Community College: 377 HTML validation errors; 5 CSS validation errors
3. University of Scranton: 0 HTML validation errors; 376 CSS validation errors