Empirical Research on Personal Networks Comparison between Cities.

该项目基于两组调查。第一项是在三个城市(福冈、熊本和德岛)进行的邮寄调查，样本由随机选择的9000人组成，每个城市3000人。在2003年的预调查之后，进一步审议了研究假设，并为2004年进行的主要调查修订了问卷。这项调查的主要焦点是了解个人个人网络的决定因素。这些因素包括生态因素(如人口规模和居住年限)、个人属性(如性别和年龄)、与家庭有关的变量和社会经济地位。这些分析集中在人口规模和个人网络之间的关系问题上，这是城市社会学学科内正在进行的辩论。我们的调查设计使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。我们的结果表明，种群规模越大，个人网络中的亲戚和邻居数量就越少。这三个城市在网络上的朋友总数方面没有差异；然而，即使在控制了所有其他变量后，大城市的受访者也有更多的朋友住在离自己30到90分钟之间。第二组调查是在2005年进行的。这是东京市中心一个社区的案例研究。一个社区协会的300名成员接受了问卷调查。此外，还对该协会的官员进行了密集采访。通过这些访谈，我们能够分析随着社区结构的变化，社区居民的个人网络是如何变化的。

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.