Sociology Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 1,097 sociology schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 1,047 sociology 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 95% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 63.7% of the 1,097 sociology schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 12.2% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.6%), yellow (6%) and black (5.8%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on sociology school websites.

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

1. Arizona State University: grey 34% and white 4.5%
2. Ohio State University - Main Campus: white 30% and grey 3.4%
3. University of Central Florida: white 46% and black 1.6%

Font

The largest number, nearly 43.2%, of sociology school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on sociology school websites include Verdana (23.3%) and Helvetica (9%).

The largest sociology school's websites use the following fonts:

1. Arizona State University: Arial
2. Ohio State University - Main Campus: Helvetica
3. University of Central Florida: Arial

Social Presence

Exactly 818 sociology schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 259 YouTube channel subscribers. The sociology schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Harvard University: 28,331 subscribers
2. Yale University: 20,055 subscribers
3. Carnegie Mellon University: 16,128 subscribers

Exactly 932 sociology schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 2,010 Twitter account followers. The sociology schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Harvard University: 69,704 followers
2. Indiana University - Bloomington: 27,945 followers
3. Arizona State University: 24,295 followers

Web Metrics

Although all sociology schools have websites, only about 19% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 81.5% of sociology school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The sociology schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. Creighton University: 7,788 broken links
2. Lasell College: 6,728 broken links
3. Northwest Missouri State University: 6,291 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on sociology school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The sociology 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. California Lutheran University: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. Foothill College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

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

1. University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point: 0 HTML validation errors; 1,213 CSS validation errors
2. Alabama A & M University: 63 HTML validation errors; 905 CSS validation errors
3. Irvine Valley College: 0 HTML validation errors; 854 CSS validation errors