Quark-Hadron Duality In Spin Structure Functions G(1)(P) And G(1)(D)

New measurements of the spin structure functions of the proton and deuteron g(1)(p)(x,Q(2)) and g(1)(d)(x,Q(2)) in the nucleon resonance region are compared with extrapolations of target-mass-corrected next-to-leading-order (NLO) QCD fits to higher energy data. Averaged over the entire resonance region (W < 2 GeV), the data and QCD fits are in good agreement in both magnitude and Q(2) dependence for Q(2 >)1.7 GeV2/c(2). This "global" duality appears to result from cancellations among the prominent "local" resonance regions: in particular strong sigma(3/2) contributions in the Delta(1232) region appear to be compensated by strong sigma(1/2) contributions in the resonance region centered on 1.5 GeV. These results are encouraging for the extension of NLO QCD fits to lower W and Q(2) than have been used previously.