We describe a new statistic for measuring the small-scale velocity dispersion of galaxies directly from redshift surveys .
This statistic is based on the object-weighted statistic proposed by Davis , Miller , & White ( 1997 ) .
Compared with the traditional pair-weighted velocity dispersion , our statistic is less sensitive to the presence or absence of rare , rich clusters of galaxies .
This measure of the thermal energy of the galaxy distribution is ideally suited for use with a filtered version of the cosmic energy equation .
We discuss the application of the statistic to the Las Campanas Redshift Survey .
The low observed dispersion strongly favors cosmological models with low matter density , \Omega _ { m } \sim 0.2 .