The relevance of place and family stage for styles of community involvement

Community involvement may be a nuanced aspect of individuals' lives, and the place of residence could play a role. In this paper, we created a measure of four different styles of community involvement using cluster analysis, then investigated how education, work involvement, family stage (marriage and parenthood and age of the youngest child), gender, and the local residential community influence the style of involvement for a randomly sampled survey of residents in four upstate New York communities (N = 1006). The locally networked were involved through informal exchanges, and their friends were mostly family and neighbors; the institutionally embedded volunteered and made friends through organizations and work; moderates invested in formal institutions and local networks, and the loosely connected were minimally involved in local community life. Family stage, educational level, work involvement, and local community of residence helped predict styles of community involvement.