We report on a study of the ratio of inclusive three-jet to inclusive two-jet production cross sections as a function of total transverse energy in p-pbar collisions at a center-of-mass energy sqrt{s} = 1.8 TeV, using data collected with the D0 detector during the 1992-1993 run of the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. The measurements are used to deduce preferred renormalization scales in perturbative O(alpha_s^3) QCD calculations in modeling soft-jet emission.
First and second errors correspond to uncorrelated (C=UNCORR) and correlated (C=CORR) uncertainties. Uncorrelated uncertainties include statistical and uncorrelated systematic uncertainties added in quadrature.