Empirical Research on Personal Networks Comparison between Cities.

该项目以两组调查为基础。第一次是在福冈、熊本、德岛3个城市进行的邮件调查，随机抽取9,000人，每个城市3,000人。在2003年的预调查之后，进一步讨论了研究假设，并为2004年进行的主要调查修改了问卷。这项调查的主要重点是访问个人的个人网络的决定因素。这些因素包括生态因素（例如，人口规模和居住年限），个人属性（例如，性别和年龄）、家庭相关变量和社会经济地位。分析围绕着人口规模与个人网络之间的关系问题，这是一个正在进行的城市社会学学科的争论。我们的调查设计采用了三个人口规模不同的城市，使我们能够评估生态因素对个人网络的影响。研究结果表明，群体规模越大，个体网络中亲属和邻居的数量越少。三个城市的网络好友总数没有差异;然而，即使在控制了所有其他变量之后，大城市的受访者拥有的好友数量也更多，这些好友居住在距离自己30到90分钟的地方。第二组调查于2005年进行。这是东京市中心一个社区的案例研究。300名成员的邻里协会进行了采访，使用问卷调查。此外，还对该协会的官员进行了深入访谈。通过这些采访，我们能够分析随着社区随着时间的推移经历结构性变化，社区居民的个人网络如何变化。

This project is based on two sets of surveys. The first one was a mail survey conducted in three cities (Fukuoka, Kumamoto, and Tokushima), with the sample consisting of 9,000 randomly selected individuals, 3,000 from each city. After a pre-survey in 2003, research hypotheses were further deliberated and the questionnaire was revised for the main survey that was conducted in 2004. The primary focus of this survey was to access the determinants of individuals' personal networks. These included ecological factors (e.g., size of population and years in residence), individual attributes (e.g., sex and age), family-related variables, and socio-economic status. The analyses centered around the issues on the relationship between the population size and personal networks, an on-going debate within the discipline of urban sociology. Our survey design that employed three cities varying in population size enabled us to assess the effect of ecological factors on personal networks. Our results indicated that the larger the population size, the smaller the number of kins and neighbors were in personal networks. There was no difference among the three cities in terms of the total number of friends in networks; however, the respondents in larger cities had a greater number of friends who lived between 30 and 90 minutes from themselves, even after all other variables were controlled for.The second set of survey was carried out in 2005. This was a case study of a community in downtown Tokyo. 300 members of a neighborhood association were interviewed using a questionnaire. In addition, intensive interviews were given to the officials of the association. Through these interviews we were able to analyze how community residents' personal networks have changed as the community went through structural changes over time.