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The search for the rural mindset: An empirical comparison of alternative definitions of rurality
Abstract
Although many people intuitively believe that persons from rural settings hold a set of values, beliefs and attitudes that are distinct from more urban dwellers, researchers have failed to provide consistent empirical support for the existence of this unique rural mindset despite seven decades of effort. Three methodological problems that could explain this failure were discussed and integrated into the methodology of the present study. First, alternative definitions of rurality were designed and compared to population of current residence, the modal definition of previous research. These alternatives reflected six definitional categories: (a) current residence, (b) residential history, (c) community of origin, (d) current farm influence, (e) rural family heritage and (f) personal self-definitions. Second, both attitudinal measures with some previous application in rural research and more recently developed measures were used to determine if measures with increased psychometric sophistication could identify differences between rural and non-rural groups left undetected by weaker measures. Six measures were used to assess three sets of attitudes: (a) religiosity, (b) parenting, and (c) gender roles. Third, while previous research had relied upon t and F-based statistics to identify significant differences between rural and urban groups, the present study applied regression approaches that could identify the proportion of variance accounted in direct comparisons between several definition of rurality. A series of six stepwise multiple regression equations that regressed sets of alternative definitions against the attitudinal measures supported four conclusions. First, alternative definitions continue to identify rural persons despite the ongoing migration of people away from rural and farm settings. Second, alternative definitions of rurality exceeded the predictive utility of population of current residence on five of the six attitudinal measures. More recently developed attitudinal measures were not more useful than measures with previous rural applications, but rather the previously used measures were the most productive assessments of rurality. Finally, regression-based analyses provided insights that may have been difficult to obtain, and even obscured by, t and F-based procedures. Implications of these findings for future research on the rural mindset were discussed.
Subject Area
Social psychology|Social research
Recommended Citation
Provorse, Dave, "The search for the rural mindset: An empirical comparison of alternative definitions of rurality" (1996). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9623636.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9623636