This report demonstrates an approach to social impact assessment based on the differential response of various communities to the stimuli of construction and operation of a major public works project. The report is one of a continuing series of studies of the impacts of the completed McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System conducted by the Corps of Engineers. Three small communities along the waterway are studied through analysis of archival data. Each community has responded uniquely to the presence of the waterway, and the report documents analyses which relate these responses to hypothesized differences in the fundamantal structure of the communities. (Author).