Restricting homology to hypersurfaces

This paper concerns the homological properties of a module $M$ over a commutative noetherian ring $R$ relative to a presentation $R\cong P/I$, where $P$ is local ring. It is proved that the Betti sequence of $M$ with respect to $P/(f)$ for a regular element $f$ in $I$ depends only on the class of $f$ in $I/\mathfrak{n} I$, where $\mathfrak{n}$ is the maximal ideal of $P$. Applications to the theory of supports sets in local algebra and in the modular representation theory of elementary abelian groups are presented.