Size of place in relation to community attachment and satisfaction with community services

A general problem in the area of urban studies has been the determination of factors significantly related to community attachment. Louis Wirth had argued that with increasing community size the level of community attachment diminishes. However, Kasarda and Janowitz employed British data and found that the length of residence in the community was a more important determinant of community attachment. Buttel et al. re-examined the question and found that the size of the community was the most important determiner of community attachment. This study analyzes the question employing national survey data collected in 1971 in the Quality of American Life study. Employing variables comparable to those of the Buttel et al. study, similar results are obtained, except that race, a variable not included in the previous study, is found to be quite significant for determining levels of community attachment. However, when urban density is introduced as a variable for the urban areas in the sample, it is found to be the most important determiner of community attachment.     

Size of place and community attachment: A reconsideration

The literature on community attachment is briefly reviewed, and the dichotomization of theoretical perspectives into ‘linear development’ and ‘systemic’ approaches is brought into question. It is argued that recent evidence on the deterioration of U.S. metropolitan areas and the emergence of net urban-to-rural migration casts doubt on the exhaustiveness of the ‘linear development’ and ‘systemic’ perspectives and warrants an empirical reconsideration of the relationship between size of place and community attachment. Rural residence proves to be positively related to dependent measures of community attachment in a 1974 statewide Wisconsin survey. Measures of ‘participatory’ attachment to the community, however, are not strongly correlated with community attachment.     

Objective and subjective indicators of community evaluation: A Pennsylvania assessment

The relationships between subjective and objective measures of well-being were assessedusing data from a survey of Pennsylvania residents and county-level statistical measures complied from secondary sources. Following Ross, Bluestone, and Hines (1979), objective social indicators were derived to measure socioeconomic status, family status, health status, and alienation for Pennsylvania countries. These indices were only modestly intercorrelated, suggesting that they measured somewhat different ideas. Subjective well-being was assessed by asking more than 3000 individual respondents to a mail survey to rate the quality of their communities. Responses were dichotomized and logistic regression used to assess the effects of the objective indicators of county well-being to individual community evaluations. The relationships were small, and inconsistent. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Social aspects of economic readjustment in Hungary: A consideration of the role of social-economic indicators

Social Accounting Matrices have been used as a means of analysing national economic structure but it is argued in this paper that their usefulness could be enhanced if they were designed to include compatible sets of socio-economic indicators which might reflect physical stocks and flows rather than strictly monetary flows. This paper considers ways in which this might be accomplished, giving particular consideration to optional approaches based on economic, social and quality of life indicators. Three approaches to providing supplementary information to the conventional Social Accounting Matrix model are considered. These include the incorporation of indicators of characteristics of households, the disaggregation of data to a geographical base and use of indicators of social attitudes and expectations. Although work continues on the first two of these suggestions, certain results concerning the third are presented. A consideration is given to the use of available secondary data to meet the needs identified. It is shown, however, that such information fails to meet the objectives of the study for various reasons. It is concluded that the necessary data can only be collected by surveys. Preliminary results of a survey carried out in Hungary beginning in May 1991 by Gallup/Hungary are presented. This information reflects attitudes of the population toward changes which are taking place and would seem to provide a means of estimating perceptions of changes in expected quality of life that result from the current efforts toward economic readjustment in Hungary.     

Objective quality of life indicators and the external validity of community research findings

We assessed how representative the objective quality of life in our research community was in order to provide a basis for judging the external validity of environmental-behavioral research findings that will emerge from future investigations. We also provided a methodology of evaluation that could be duplicated by other community study groups. The central city and county units of a U.S. Midwestern metropolitan area were categorized into four geographic reference zones with structural attributes that differentiated them along a city-suburban-rural continuum. Within this geographic frame-work, we were able to evaluate how eleven major categories of our community's quality of life compared, and to unambiguously assign the community's quality of life a position along the city-suburban-rural continuum.     

Program indicators: Their role and use in the integrated social or community programming

The paper wishes to relocate the theme of social indicators within one of their most congenial reference frames, that of the social or community programming-evaluation process. It defines what a program is and also the meaning “program structure”. Further, it argues the relationship between objectives in the definition of program structures, and it develops a procedure to build the program structure and to apply a program analysis and evaluation. Finally, it considers, more in general, the nature and classification of program indicators and the criteria for the choice of types of program indicators in different circumstances. The discussion is supported with two examples of program structuring and the related selection of program indicators taken from two very different programs instigated by the Italian government: one is a program of aid for the poor and undernourished population of the third world; and the second is the 10 year plan for the environment beyond the year 2000.     

Theorizing indicators

Policymakers and social theorists have increasingly come to rely on social indicators to guide their decisions and theories. Social indicators are also useful in bridging theory and empirical research as well as the traditional gap between policymaking and social theory. The concept of social indicators covers interpretation of cultural signs, simple statistical measures, and complex statistical indexes related to sets of domains. The article views the development of child well-being indicators as central not only in the social welfare field, but as an indicator of future societal conditions, given that children’s lives are especially sensitive to social change. The paper addresses the development of indicators of children’s well-being, arguing that the expansion of the field, the complexity of new domains and indicators, and the position of children as “being” and “becoming”, they are citizens of the present as well as being socialized for the future, illustrates that the next crucial step for the field is to further elaborate theories and models.     

Linguistic indicators

The quality of life of a society can be considered a function of its complexity which in turn can be indicated by the complexity of its language. Moreover, it is well known that a characterization of a language or of a particular author can be measured statistically. With this in view, this paper surveys and compares a class of linguistic indicators which characterizes languages and authors, presents a uniform review of Zipf's law including extensions and explanations, and presents a new rank-frequency approach which is useful as a linguistic indicator.     

Social indicators of racial parity

Using the U.S. Census' Social Indicators III (73 indicators) and the OECD List of Social Indicators (33 indicators), a modified Delphi panel was surveyed in two rounds to rank 106 items and 19 “areas of major social concerns” as to how “essential” or “unnecessary” each indicator was in measuring racial parity in the U.S. A hypothesis about how much consensus was reached overall between the first- and second-round responses and hypotheses about comparative views among Academics, minority Advocates and Government researchers-administrators were tested (See Table I). From the second-round returns, the top 15 indicators (selected by the panel) and the 19 major areas of social concerns were analyzed. Secondary data were gathered and built into a Dissimilarity Index. Comparisons were analyzed statistically in increments of 5 indicators (quintiles), and overall to determine how much parity, or equality, between Afro-Americans and Whites had been obtained between the “early 1980s” and the “early 1990s”.     

Stochastic indicators of income mobility

Income mobility is one of the indicators of social mobility. This study explains the methodology in estimating the stochastic indicators of income mobility in Canada using aggregate time series data. Assuming stationary finite Markov chain approximation of the mobility process, the probabilities of transition from one income stratum to another was estimated. The absolute minimum deviation criterion has been employed for the period 1946–72. This investigation suggests that, on an annual basis, there was low degree of upward income mobility in Canada.     

Perceptual indicators of family well-being

A resource exchange theory for the development of perceptual indicators of quality of family life is presented with empirical evidence to test the theory. The theory specifies six classes of resources: love, status, services, information, goods and money, as necessary to maintain some level of life quality. The first three are the most dependent on the particular people involved in the exchange relationship and the interpersonal exchanges of these resources offer opportunities for highest levels of satisfaction. It was hypothesized (1) that feelings about the particularistic resources received from family would significantly contribute to family life satisfaction for men and women; (2) that the order of resource classes on the particularism dimension would correspond to the order of their effectiveness in contributing to family life satisfaction. Results of the study support the theoretical model and hypotheses and suggest that further research with respondents of differing life circumstances is needed. The need for indicators of quality of family life in quality of life research is emphasized.     

Some neglected social indicators

The attention now being given in the social sciences to time series indicators that measure the ‘Social Health’ of the nation is a most welcome development. Too often, sweeping claims of social change have very little hard supporting evidence. The new trend indicators offer the opportunity for more rigorous analysis of diverse subjects than is often employed in the ‘soft sciences’. Public opinion indicators show a decline in favor for U.S. business which has resulted in Congressional legislation of business, labor reform, restrictions on the environment, consumerism, and inflation. More restrictions can be expected if the social indicators are correct. Political indicators tell us that Republican party loyalty and allegiance have steadily declined since the 1950s and perhaps the ‘emerging Republican majority’ is merely a myth. There are vast implications to be derived from indicators that show the birth rate nearing zero population growth; religion steadily losing influence in America over the past 30 years; and, the youth are far more sober than the rebellious few who draw mass media attention. Social indicators have been very predictive of the future but largely ignored. A clearinghouse is needed to systematically monitor existing social indicators to avoid waste, duplication and downright reglect of important information.     

Toward sociomedical health indicators

The various forms of mortality data and biomedical measures of morbidity have become inadequate measures of the level of health in economically developed countries. Measures of functional physical capacity have some advantages but do not reflect physical impairment. Current attempts to develop sociomedical health indicators include: measures of social disability; typologies of presenting symptoms, which have been used to estimate probable needs for care; measures which focus on behavioral expressions of sickness; research based on operational definitions of ‘positive mental health’, ‘happiness’ and perceived quality of life; assessments of met and unmet needs for health care, which are measures of social capacity to care for the sick. Sociomedical indicators reflect both objective conditions and social values. They are policy-oriented, serving as mobilizing agents for sociopolitical pressures concerned with raising the overall level of health of the population.     

Causes and indicators of housing quality

This paper examines the feasibility and validity of one method for combining measures of different dimensions of the quality of a household's housing situation into a summary index value. Housing quality is treated as an unobservable variable for which there are multiple observable causes and indicators. Alternative mathematical models are specified, and their parameters are estimated using data from a sample of low-income renter households in a major U.S. metropolitan area.     

Social indicators of perceived life quality

Modern societies in both developing and developed countries have real and legitimate concerns about the enhancement, maintenance, and redistribution of individual well-being. Indicators of perceived well-being provide direct measures of what societies are trying to achieve, permit cross-sector comparisons, can indicate the adequacy of coverage of ‘objective’ indicators, and can contribute to social policy making. in both the long and short run. Some commentators, however, have suggested perceptual indicators suffer from methodological weaknesses associated with their validity, interpretability, completeness, and utility. Each of these possible weaknesses is addressed in some detail. New research evidence and certain philosophical perspectives are presented, and it is concluded that none of these presumed weaknesses is sufficient to invalidate the development and use of perceptual indicators. Suggestions are made concerning methodological research needed to support the development of indicators of perceived well-being. It is noted that the materials and results developed in the author's research on Americans' perceptions of life quality may be useful for suggesting approaches to the development of indicators of perceived life quality relevant to other cultures.     

Partial order analysis of crime indicators

A frequent variety of typological system is that which results when a given population is classified simultaneously by several social indicators. When the categories of each indicator are ordered, and in a sense common to all the indicators, a partial order is automatically defined for the system. The empirical problem is to ascertain the dimensionality and the substantive meaning of the partly ordered system. This will be illustrated here by the case of the characterization of American cities by their crime rates, the data analysis employing the technique of Partial Order Structuple (Scalogram) Analysis.     

The social meaning of social indicators

While new modes of data processing have provided reams of data, there has been relatively less effort in seeking to comprehend the social meaning of results of empirical work. A set of previously developed indicators of urban social structure is here examined for its link to theory, and to the social structure of the city itself. The original indicators (size, social class, racial composition and community maturity) were empirically derived. In this paper, each is taken in turn, and explored with respect to several possible social meanings. Size, for example, is considered to be itself an indicator, and an imperfect one, for system complexity; percent non-white is seen to be itself an indicator for a slowdown in the mobility process, or a slower social metabolism. These and other results are suggestions, with illustrations, but not conclusive support, from other than the original data. While it is hoped that the theoretical suggestions may themselves be of interest, it is also hoped that approach itself can indicate the fertility and usefulness of going back to theory once empirical measures have been developed.     

The mobility experience and neighborhood attachment

In this study, I consider variables associated with an individual’s most recent move into his or her current residence as predictors of neighborhood attachment. Using the 1978–1979 Seattle Community Attachment Survey, I find that elements of the mobility experience such as an individual’s past history of migration, the motivations for moving, the amount of time involved in the move, and the distance traveled during the move have an effect on shortand long-term neighborhood attachment patterns independent of residential stability and investment predictors. The findings imply that psychosocial factors such as familiarity with the environment, increased premove exposure to the new environment, and perceived control during instances of transition have some impact on individuals’ postmove attitudes and behaviors, and suggest that researchers should look beyond traditional “types of people” explanations of urban neighborhood attachment.