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4. James Youniss, Jeffrey A. McLellan, and Miranda Yates, “What We Know about Engendering Civic Identity,” American Behavioral Scientist (March/April 1997): 620–631; Elizabeth Smith, “Extracurricular Activities and Political Participation: Exploring the Connection,” paper presented at 1998 Midwestern Political Science Association, unpublished ms., 1998; Michael Hanks, “Youth, Voluntary Associations, and Political Socialization,” Social Forces 60 (1981): 211–223; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady, Voice and Equality, 423–442, 449, 452; Paul Allen Beck and M. Kent Jennings, “Pathways to Participation,” American Political Science Review 76 (1982): 94–108; David Ziblatt, “High School Extracurricular Activities and Political Socialization,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 361 (1965): 20–31; John Wilson and Thomas Janoski, “Contribution of Religion to Volunteer Work,” Sociology of Religion 56 (1995): 137–152; Nicholas Zill, Christin Winquist Nord, and Laura Spencer Loomis, “Adolescent Time Use, Risky Behavior, and Outcomes: An Analysis of National Data” (at http://aspe.os.dhhs.gov/hsp/cyp/ xstimuse.htm).
5. Sandra E. Black and Lisa M. Lynch, “How to Compete: The Impact of Workplace Practices and Information Technology on Productivity” (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research working paper Series #6120, August 1997); Report on the American Workforce 1999, 103. More generally on issues of work, family, and community, see the publications of the Families and Work Institute at www.familiesandwork.org/.
6. One group experimenting in this area is Working Today (www.workingtoday.org).
7. For a reasoned discussion of alternatives for reducing sprawl, see Richard Moe and Carter Wilkie, Changing Places: Rebuilding Community in the Age of Sprawl (New York: Henry Holt, 1997).
8. For an overview, see William Fulton, New Urbanism: Hope or Hype for American Communities? (Cam-bridge, Mass.: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 1996). The Congress for the New Urbanism (www.cnu.org) forged a charter to which builders, architects, planners, government officials, and others subscribe.
9. For nuanced first-person impressions of Celebration, see Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, Celebration, U.S.A.: Living in Disney’s Brave New Town (New York: Henry Holt, 1999), and Andrew Ross, The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property Value in Disney’s New Town (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999).
10. John L. McKnight and John P. Kretzmann, Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets (Chicago, Ill.: ACTA Publications, 1993); Harry C. Boyte and Nancy N. Kari, Building America: The Democratic Promise of Public Work (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996). The Texas Industrial Areas Foundation, led by Ernesto Cortes, has pioneered many effective community organizing techniques; for a useful overview, see Mark Russell Warren, Social Capital and Community Empowerment: Religion and Political Organization in the Texas Industrial Areas Foundation (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University Department of Sociology, 1995). On CDCs and social capital, see Urban Problems and Community Development, Ferguson and Dickens, eds., and Xavier de Souza Briggs and Elizabeth Mueller, From Neighborhood to Community: Evidence on the Social Effects of Community Development (New York: Community Development Research Center, New School for Social Research, 1997).
11. William G. McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform; Marshall William Fishwick, Great Awakenings: Popular Religion and Popular Culture (New York: Haworth Press, 1995); Anne Boylan, Sunday School: The Formation of an American Institution, 1790–1880 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988); Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order, 34–53.
12. Diane Winston, Red-Hot and Righteous: The Urban Religion of the Salvation Army (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999).
13. In 1995 a number of evangelicals, spearheaded by Jim Wallis of Sojourners, formed an evangelical coalition spanning the political spectrum from ultra-liberal to ultra-conservative. See Jim Wallis, Faith Works (New York: Random House, 2000). See also Howard Husock, “Bringing Back the Settlement House,” The Public Interest 109 (Fall 1992): 53–72.
14. Lewis A. Friedland, Jay Rosen, and Lisa Austin, Civic Journalism: A New Approach to Citizenship (1994) at www.cpn.org/sections/topics/journalism; Jay Rosen and Paul Taylor, The New News v. the Old News: Press and Politics in the 1990s (New York: Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1992); James Fallows, Breaking the News (New York: Vintage Books, 1997); Frank Denton and Esther Thorson, “Civic Journalism: Does It Work?” (a Special Report for the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, 1997), available at www.pewcenter.org/doingcj/research/r_doesit.html. For a thoughtful critique, see Charlotte Grimes, “Whither the Civic Journalism Bandwagon?” Discussion Paper D-36, Joan Shorenstein Center on Press and Politics (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University: 1999).
15. Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman, “Examining Community in the Digital Neighborhood: Early Results from Canada’s Wired Suburb,” in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Toru Ishida and Katherine Isbister, eds. (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2000); Andrea Kavanaugh, “The Impact of the Internet on Community: A Social Network Analysis” (Blacksburg, Va.: Blacksburg Electronic Village, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1999); Andrew S. Patrick, “Personal and Social Impacts of Going On-Line: Lessons from the National Capital Free Net” (Ottawa, Canada: Communications Research Center, 1997), at http://debra.dgbt.doc.ca/services-research/survey/impacts. Caution is appropriate in assessing these early returns, especially given the possibility of self-selection. More generally, see Douglas Schuler, New Community Networks: Wired for Change (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1996).
16. For information on some of the projects cited here, see: Liz Lerman Dance Exchange at www.dance exchange.org/lizhome.html; Roadside Theater at www.appalshop.org/rst/99rstabt.htm; Baltimore Museum of Art at www.artbma.org; Galley 37 at www.gallery37.org. See also Opening the Door to the Entire Community: How Museums Are Using Permanent Collections to Engage Audiences (New York: Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund, November 1998), available at www.wallacefunds.org/lilaframesetpub.htm.
17. On Indianapolis’s Front Porch Alliance, see www.indygov.com/mayor/fpa/. On neighborhood government, see Berry, Portney, and Thomson, The Rebirth of Urban Democracy.
APPENDIX I: MEASURING SOCIAL CHANGE
1. For examples of this error, see Lester M. Salamon, “The Rise of the Nonprofit Sector,” Foreign Affairs 73 (1994): 109–122, esp. 111, and Nicholas Freudenberg and Carol Steinsapir, “Not in Our Backyards: The Grassroots Environmental Movement,” in American Environmentalism: The U.S. Environmental Movement, 1970–1990, edited by Riley E. Dunlap and Angela G. Mertig (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1992), 29.
2. David Horton Smith, “The Rest of the Nonprofit Sector: Grassroots Associations as the Dark Matter Ignored in Prevailing ‘Flat Earth’ Maps of the Sector,” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 26 (June 1997): 115–131.
3. Verba, Schlozman, Brady, Voice and Equality, 62, report that in response to a single question about membership in organizations—“for example, unions or professional associations, fraternal groups, recreational organizations, political issue organizations, community or school groups, and so on”—49 percent of all respondents claimed at least one membership. In response to subsequent probing about nineteen specific types of organizations, fully 79 percent mentioned one or more affiliations.
4. Experts who know better sometimes violate this elementary precept; see, for example, Andrew Kohut, “Trust and Citizen Engagement in Metropolitan Philadelphia: A Case Study” (Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center on the People & the Press, 1997), and American Association of Retired Persons, Maintaining America’s Social Fabric: The AARP Survey of Civic Involvement (Washington, D.C.: AARP, 1996).
5. These oft cited counterexamples (such as Nicholas Lemann, “Kicking in Groups: Alleged Decline of America’s Communal Capital,” Atlantic Monthly [April 1996]: 22–27; Robert J. Samuelson, “‘Bowling Alone’ Is Bunk,” Washington Post [April 10, 1996]: A19) are, in fact, fallacious. As report
ed in chapter 6, four different national survey archives confirm that softball playing fell by a third between the mid-1980s and the late 1990s. Soccer, though unquestionably of growing importance, involves only a tiny proportion of all adults, even as spectators. According to the Sporting Goods Association of America, less than 20 percent of all American schoolchildren played soccer more than once in 1993. Since less than 30 percent of Americans are parents of schoolchildren, less than 6 percent of all adults in 1993 were parents of youth soccer players; by contrast, that same year 18 percent of all adults bowled more than once. Bowlers, in short, are three times as common in America as soccer parents. Even if—quite implausibly— every single soccer mom and dad in America began to show up regularly at their children’s games, their numbers would not offset the decline in league bowling. In fact, the DDB Needham Life Style surveys suggest that parental attendance at sporting events was actually lower in the 1990s than in the 1970s. Regular soccer moms and dads do build social capital, but they are too rare, relatively speaking, to constitute a significant countertrend.
6. For a critique that indiscriminately mixes data about “change” over a year or two and “change” over half a century, see Everett C. Ladd, “The Data Just Don’t Show Erosion of America’s ‘Social Capital,’” The Public Perspective 7 (June/July 1996): 5–22.
7. Of the four primary survey series on which we can draw, the General Social Survey began in 1972, the Roper Social and Political Trends surveys began in 1974, and the DDB Needham Life Style surveys began in 1975. The National Election Studies began in 1952, but their long-term coverage is limited primarily to national electoral and campaign behavior.
8. Another instance of this issue of absolute vs. relative change involves money. As explained in chapter 7, generosity should be measured by the fraction of personal income (or national income) that is given to charity, not the absolute number of dollars.
9. Norman H. Nie, Jane Junn, and Kenneth Stehlik-Barry, Education and Democratic Citizenship in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
10. John Helliwell and Robert D. Putnam, “Education and Social Capital,” unpublished ms.
11. Information about access to all the major data archives used in this research is available at www.bowling alone.com.
12. Figures 53, 65, and 73 do incorporate multivariate controls.
13. NES data are available from the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan. GSS data are available from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut (Storrs).
14. The raw data from these surveys were deposited with the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut (Storrs). However, because of archiving difficulties, the data themselves became available for analysis only recently, thanks to the efforts of a joint team from Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley. I am grateful to Steve Yonish and to Henry Brady and his colleagues for their Herculean efforts in this Augean task. For an earlier analysis of political participation based on the aggregate Roper data, see Rosenstone and Hansen, Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy. Roper polling continued after December 1994, but the raw data after that date are unavailable to academic researchers, and in any event the format of the crucial questions changed significantly at that time, so that direct comparison with the prior data is no longer possible. Results for the first survey in 1995 show a sharp onetime upward ratcheting for every single one of the dozen civic activities, but from that new higher benchmark, each activity then resumed its downward trend. In other words, although the analysis of the Roper data in this book is limited to 1973–94, there is reason to believe that the declines in civic engagement continued after that period. Aggregate results from Roper surveys between 1995 and 1998 used in this book are drawn from the bimonthly Roper Reports (New York: Roper Starch Worldwide, 1995–98), which can be consulted at the Roper Center at the University of Connecticut.
15. I am grateful to Dhavan Shah, a former graduate student at the University of Minnesota, and his instructor, Professor William Wells, for alerting me to the existence of the DDB Needham Life Style surveys. Marty Horn, Doug Hughes, Chris Callahan, and their colleagues at DDB Needham generously made these data available for analysis and responded to subsequent inquiries. Sid Groeneman and his colleagues at Market Facts helped me to understand the methodology used and its potential advantages and disadvantages. For background, see Life Style and Psycho-graphics, ed. William D. Wells (Chicago: American Marketing Association, 1974), and William D. Wells, “Psycho-graphics: A Critical Review,” Journal of Marketing Research 12 (1975): 196–213.
16. The answer to all these questions is “Yes.”
17. This adjustment involves estimating the “level” difference between married and single respondents over the 1985–99 period, using that difference to estimate the annual scores for single respondents during the 1975–84 period and then estimating the annual population score during the 1975–84 period by creating a “synthetic” sample with the appropriate fraction of married and single respondents. In the few cases where the “level” difference between married and single respondents changed over 1985–99, I projected that difference backward for the 1975–84 period. This procedure assumes away any nonlinear interaction in the effects of year and marital status, but I found no evidence of such interaction in any of the variables of interest in this study.
18. Robert D. Putnam and Steven Yonish, “How Important Is Response Rate? An Evaluation of a ‘Mail Panel’ Survey Archive,” unpublished ms. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1999).
19. Respondents are occasionally offered a nominal gift—a packet of Post-it notes and a tiny tote bag, for exam-ple—for completing a particularly burdensome questionnaire.
20. Sid Groeneman (“Multi-purpose Household Panels and General Samples: How Similar and How Different?” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Danvers, Mass., 1994; emphasis in the original) reports that the sample is “drawn to approximate actual distributions of household income, population density, panel member’s age, and household size within the 9 Census divisions.” Weights are then applied to the actual respondents to match the demographic composition of the final sample to the target population. Questionnaires are mailed to roughly 5,000 respondents; usable responses are received from an average of 3500–4000 respondents.
21. This is also true for conventional sampling, but the disparity is greater for mail panels.
22. Though the questions are not exactly comparable, there is evidence that DDB data contains 10 percent too many homeowners, as compared with GSS data. There is also some evidence that the undersampling of the less educated has been somewhat reduced in more recent years.
23. Groeneman, “Multi-purpose Household Panels,” compared panel and nonpanel samples using data obtained from Market Facts mail panel and random digit dialing surveys. The discrepancy in party identification, though statistically significant, is very slight. In 1996 the NES found 39 percent Democrats, 28 percent Republicans, and 33 percent Independents; in that same year the Life Style sample reported 37 percent Democrats, 31 percent Republicans, and 32 percent Independents.
24. Andrew Kohut, “Conservative Opinions Not Underestimated, but Racial Hostility Missed” (Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center on the People & the Press, 1998). See also Penny Visser, Jon Krosnick, Jesse Marquette, and Michael Curtin, “Mail Surveying for Election Forecasting: An Evaluation of the Columbus Dispatch Poll,” Public Opinion Quarterly 60 (1996): 181–227.
25. I have found no paired questions in the two surveys that would call into question the essential comparability of the two data sets. That is, I have not singled out comparisons that support my conclusion.
26. Putnam and Yonish, “How Important Is Response Rate?”
27. I also compared DDB Needham Life Style results in 1982 and 1984 with simultaneous, roughly comparable eviden
ce from the Roper surveys regarding dining out, moviegoing, and attending a sporting event. The Roper questions asked, “Did you happen to engage in this activity this last week?” whereas the Life Style questions asked, “How often last year did you engage in this activity?” When the Roper “last week” responses are converted to “times per year” (by multiplying by 52), the results are virtually identical to the Life Style responses (dinner out: nineteen times per year for each; movies: five times per year for each; sports event: four times per year in the Roper surveys, five times per year in the Life Style surveys).