Small Town Communities Research Articles

Adolescent drug use in three small rural communities in the Rocky Mountain region.

Anonymous surveys of drug use were administered to eighth- and twelfth-grade students in three small rural communities and one mid-sized community in the Rocky Mountain region. Differences were found between the three small towns in both lifetime prevalence and the frequency of occurrence of different types of drug users, indicating that small rural communities are likely to develop idiosyncratic patterns of drug use. These differences were more evident among eighth-grade than among twelfth-grade students. Minimal differences were found between the combined small community sample and the urban sample. Use by small town youth, for some drugs, may even exceed that of students in urban communities, suggesting that youth from small communities no longer have lower use rates, at least in this region. Differences of use between seniors in the Rocky Mountain region (small town and urban communities combined) and the national senior survey [1] are relatively small, but significant, perhaps reflecting a regional pattern of drug involvement.

Informal Support Networks Meet Health needs of Rural Elderly

While major studies of informal support systems have been conducted in urban areas, it is important to gain comparable knowledge for the rural and small town communities in which so many older people live. This exploratory study had as its overall purpose to examine the association between community based informal support networks and the ability of older adults to carry out daily activities in a rural area-the measure of the functional health status of the person. Within a rural perspective the outcome of the study included: replication of urban data in terms of network identification; the generation for further study of two hypotheses related to the association of network functionality and functional health and one hypothesis related to the association of network proximity and functionality; and recommendations of unstudied areas of concern for a better understanding of network functionality.

Hospital-sponsored medical groups: their impact on access to primary care in rural communities.

Rural communities have traditionally been underserved in terms of the availability of primary medical care services and providers. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched a major program in the mid-1970s to improve the delivery of primary care to previously underserved rural, small town, inner city and other urban communities through their Community Hospital Program (CHP). This program provided grant funds to over 50 community hospitals throughout the country to develop primary care-oriented group practices. Twelve of the 53 programs eventually funded were sampled for a national evaluation of the impact of the CHP groups on access to care in the communities they served. The analyses reported here summarize the access impact of this innovation on the four rural and small town communities included in the larger evaluation. Baseline surveys in these four communities established that, in general, access was poorer in the rural areas, in particular, compared to the national average. The new groups tended to attract a cross-section of the communities they served. In general, they tended to do as well or better as other sources of care in the area in providing access to care. The most successful groups were those that most closely mirrored the traditional private practitioner--"family doctor"--model of care.

URBAN IDEOLOGY AS A CULTURAL SYSTEM

This qualitative, interview study explores the way that some contemporary urban enthusiasts think about cities, suburbs and small towns in order to develop an interpretation of urban ideology as a cultural system. Unlike much previous work on urban imagery and preferences that stresses the antiurbanism of American culture, this research demonstrates that city fans draw on a favorable ideology of cities, a shared perspective that emphasizes the centrality, diversity, liberality and freedom of cities, and the marginality, uniformity, conservatism and oppressiveness of suburban and small town communities. This shared perspective, moreover, not only legitimates personal commitment to cities but also shapes the way urban enthusiasts interpret contemporary urban problems and, in some cases, articulate an urban identity—a sense of being an active, openminded liberal person who belongs in a city.

School Decentralization in the Context of Community Control: Some Neglected Considerations

THE DEMAND for community control of schools is usually understood as a demand by blacks and other racial or quasi-racial minorities for greater control over the institutions within their inner-city ghettos.' In fact, it is, in one form or another, a well-nigh universal demand in the United States today, one that transcends the immediate interests of innercity residents, important as those interests are. Indeed, the demand for community control is a new demand but simply a restatement of one as American as mother's proverbial apple pie.2 It has been brought back into the public eye by the militancy of blacks, Puerto Ricans and Chinese in the country's great central cities in their search for a right common to most Americans but which they have never been able to exercise. The demand for decentralization of big city school systems, which includes the demand for control over the personnel responsible for the schools within them, is the most widely recognized element in the quest for community control but is the only aspect of that quest. The desires of suburban residents to maintain relatively small independent school districts is of the same order except that because the suburban school systems were constituted in that way from the first, their demand does involve a militant campaign for the attainment of the objective. Still, suburbanites must wage more subdued campaigns to maintain their version of community control. Their situation generally goes unrecognized for what it is and, worse than that, is usually attacked for what it is not. One additional dimension has now been added to the suburban interest in community control. It was in the suburbs that the notion that education was somehow not political reached its peak. With the erosion of that idea, one finds growing demands in the suburbs for moderating the control of professional educators over the schools and injecting greater citizen participation at least in the shaping of educational policy. This, too, is part of the demand for community control, one that is no different in its essentials from that of the inner-city minorities.3 Finally, the demand for community control of schools still flickers in the peripheral areas of the United States, in those small town and rural communities which have borne the brunt of the consolidation movement of the past generation and were the first to lose control at the immediate

Belief in the Evil Eye among the Christian Syrian-Lebanese in America

THE STRONG MEDITERRANEAN BELIEF in the power of the evil eye was imported intact with the cultural baggage of the Christian Syrian-Lebanese immigrants who joined the tide of new immigrants to America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. But despite the significant place the eye once held in the beliefs of these tradition-bound people, its practice in America is greatly diminished. This was evident from conversations with first-generation immigrants whom had the opportunity to interview in the summer of I962.1 Of 87 informants only 21, all women whose average age was about 65, responded to questions about the evil eye, frequently with embarrassment. And of those who did proffer any information, credence ranged from strong conviction to complete disavowal, while the majority were skeptical. An early immigrant, expressing the skeptical view, frankly admitted that she had once strongly feared the evil eye, . . but then, she added, I got to thinking and it didn't make sense to me so stopped believing in it. This development can be partly attributed to their remarkable integration into American life which was accomplished within the lifetime of many of the first generation. The Christian Syrian-Lebanese who came to America had been predominantly small land-owning peasants and minor craftsmen from the villages of Syria and Lebanon. Many of the immigrants interviewed emigrated from an area which before World War was a part of Syria and was annexed to Lebanon only after their departure to America. Until Lebanese independence in I94I they had always referred to themselves as Syrians and some among them still retain that identification. No reliable figures on the number of Christian Syrian-Lebanese in the United States are available, but a rough estimate is 200,000. The majority of the immigrants began life in America as notions and dry goods peddlers operating from several scattered communities all over the country. Peddling as a way of life was generally temporary but its contribution to their integration was substantial. While it both demanded intercourse with the American community and tended to keep their own communities relatively loose and fluid, it was also a means for these highly individualistic people, unfamiliar with the English language and American customs, to accumulate capital, establish a business of their own, and move up the ladder of economic success. In addition to being scattered, mobile, and success-oriented, they suffered no particular group discrimination. Their integration process on the whole was favorable enough to minimize anxieties which in turn not only devitalized superstitions but gradually weakened the transmission of folk beliefs to subsequent generations. Where the belief in the evil eye does persist, it is in relatively isolated small-town communities or in rural areas. Here, the children of early immigrants and those who came with their parents at a young age seem to fear the evil eye more than the older women of the first generation. The Christian Syrian-Lebanese belief in the evil eye contains many of the typical characteristics generally associated with that widespread superstition. It is, for example, the manifestation of envy or jealousy and is thrust or struck at its

Sex-Courting Concerns of a Class of Twelfth Grade Girls

As courtship norms change from the traditional to those of the peer group it can be expected that confusion will result regarding proper behavior in the sex-courting relationship. Large-scale quantitative studies are needed to determine what problems this confusion creates; but until these have been carried out small qualitative studies of individual high school classes may be both provocative and revealing. The present study examines the sex-dating concerns of girls in the senior class of a high school in a small-town university community of about 6000 population. The study is based on a series of pretested objective check questions and four questions requiring written statements from the respondent. The study covered all the boys [(40)] and girls [(47)] in the senior class present on the day the survey was conducted. The responses of the boys will be presented in a later paper. Twenty-five per cent of the fathers of students involved in the study were professional men 16 per cent businessmen 18 per cent skilled workers 12 per cent semi-skilled and unskilled workers 8 per cent farm owners 6 per cent farm laborers and 15 per cent unclassified. The mean age for puberty of the girls was 12.5 years and 14.6 years for age when dating began. Twenty-six per cent of the girls reported that they had never gone steady. For the rest the mean age for beginning steady dating was 15.4 years. Their present dating status was reported as follows: not dating 10 per cent (although some had dated in the past); dating the field 34 per cent; going steady 30 per cent; engaged 13 per cent; married 13 per cent. (excerpt)

Mrs. Catherwood's Early Experiments with Critical Realism

M /[RS. MARY HARTWELL Catherwood probably never thought of herself as a realist. In the nineties she declared herself firmly on the side of the romanticists, and Hamlin Garland, who found her his chief and most annoying critical opponent in the Middle West, agreed with her very energetically in this definition of her stand. To him, Mrs. Catherwood and the facile historical romances upon which her fame largely rested after i888,1 epitomized everything which was the opposite of Veritism.2 Mrs. Catherwood had arrived at her skill in writing these popular novels, however, only after ten years of practice with Middle Western local color. She had been the first short-story writer to exploit the material of the old corn belt that lies east of the Mississippi in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.3 Furthermore, her stories of this region, although they later assumed a characteristic coating of sentiment and glamorous retrospect, passed through an early stage of development, especially between I878 and I882, when they were concerned largely with recording the unpleasant present as the author herself had experienced it in various farm and small-town communities. Nine years before Joseph Kirkland's Zury: The Meanest Man in Spring County (i887), Mrs. Catherwood published A Little God (i878-i879), a novelette concerned with the vulgar-

GROWTH OF CHILDREN THAT ARE BELOW AVERAGE WEIGHT

Do children that are below average weight tend to gain or lose ground when no active steps are taken with specific regard to nutrition? Do these children increase their weight with any regularity? Does the age or sex of these children bear any relation to the gain or loss of weight? This paper is the preliminary one of a series of studies that are being undertaken in an attempt to answer these questions. MATERIAL AND METHODS For the purposes of this study, 1,491 children, 901 girls and 590 boys, were followed through a period of from two to four years. These children were of American stock, living in rural and small town communities. They were weighed on accurate scales, and measured according to the method of Baldwin.1The measurements were taken at the same time each year, with the children in stocking feet and ordinary indoor clothing. The standard

Professional Guidance for the Small Town Community Chest

Journal Article Professional Guidance for the Small Town Community Chest Get access Elwood Street Elwood Street Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 5, Issue 4, June 1927, Pages 639–640, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/5.4.639 Published: 01 June 1927

Professional Guidance for the Small Town Community Chest

Professional Guidance for the Small Town Community Chest

The results of the intracutaneous tuberculin test in an Ontario survey of school and pre-school children

A general health survey was made of 1,392 children of school and pre-school age in a typical Ontario town and an adjoining rural township. This included intracutaneous tuberculin tests and single X-ray films of the chest. Four hundred and twenty-six children, or 32 per cent., reacted to tuberculin; 14 children, practically 1 per cent., were considered to have active tuberculosis. Thirty-six per cent, of town children reacted, and 22 per cent, of the rural children. In the general grouping approximately 15 per cent. react at time of entering school. At 7 years 25 per cent. react, at 10 years 40 per cent, react, and at 15 years 50 per cent, are infected. Up to the age of 10 the incidence of infection is the same for boys as for girls. In the age group 10 to 14, the incidence rises more rapidly in girls in the town and in boys in the country. From a comparison with other studies it is quite evident that infection is not as great in rural and small town communities as in the large cities. Radiological studies of the chests of reacting and non-reacting children have given results in accord with the conclusions of the special committee of the National Tuberculosis Association presented at the 1922 meeting (see American Review of Tuberculosis, July, 1922, vol. vi, 531). A diagnosis of lymphatic tuberculosis or even of early pulmonary tuberculosis is not warranted by a study of X-ray films alone. In a large percentage of cases giving a history of respiratory infections there was evidence of increased density in the hilum and larger trunk shadows, simulating those of tuberculosis. Of the reactors, 36 per cent. had shadowing within normal limits, and 64 per cent, showed increased shadowing. Of the non-reactors, 56 per cent, had shadowing within normal limits and 44 per cent, showed increased shadowing. This is one of a number of provincial surveys being conducted in Canada, the results of which will be published by the Canadian Tuberculosis Association.