title: Measuring the Frequency Occurrence of Handwriting and Handprinting Characteristics<sup/>.
abstract: The premise of this study was to take a valid population sampling of handwriting and handprinting and assess how many times each of the predetermined characteristic is found in the samples. Approximately 1500 handwriting specimens were collected from across the United States and pared to obtain a representative sample of the U.S. adult population according to selected demographics based on age, sex, ethnicity, handedness, education level, and location of lower-grade school education. This study has been able to support a quantitative assessment of extrinsic and intrinsic effects in handwriting and handprinting for the six subgroups. Additional results include analyses of the interdependence of characteristics. This study found that 98.55% of handprinted characteristics and 97.39% of cursive characteristics had an independence correlation of under 0.2. The conclusions support use of the product rule in general, but with noted caveats. Finally, this study provides frequency occurrence proportions for 776 handwriting and handprinting characteristics.
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, and Joint Appointment, National Center for Forensic Science, University of Central Florida, 828 Brightwater Circle, Maitland, Orlando, FL, 32751.
authors.forename: Mark E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.affiliation: Forensic Document Examiner, D-ABFDE, Private Practice, 522 S. Hunt Club Blvd, #217, Apopka, Orlando, FL, 32703.
authors.forename: Thomas W
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Vastrick
authors.affiliation: Department of Business, Rollins College and President of JISC, Inc., Winter Park, 828 Brightwater Circle, Maitland, FL, 32751.
authors.forename: Michèle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Boulanger
authors.affiliation: Forensic Document Examiner, D-ABFDE, Private Practice, 6348 N Milwaukee Ave. #161, Chicago, IL, 60646.
authors.forename: Ellen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schuetzner
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006236:Handwriting; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D044469:Racial Groups / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017678:Sex Distribution; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: attribute agreement analysis; cursive; forensic science; frequency occurrence; handprinting; handwriting; product rule; proportions; questioned documents