Empirical Research on Personal Networks Comparison between Cities.

这个项目是基于两组调查。第一个是在三个城市（福冈、熊本和德岛）进行的邮件调查，样本由随机选择的9000人组成，每个城市3000人。经过2003年的预调查，进一步审议了研究假设，并对2004年的主要调查问卷进行了修改。这项调查的主要焦点是获取个人人际网络的决定因素。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）、家庭相关变量和社会经济地位。分析的中心是人口规模和个人网络之间的关系问题，这是城市社会学学科内正在进行的辩论。我们的调查设计采用了三个不同人口规模的城市，使我们能够评估生态因素对个人网络的影响。我们的研究结果表明，人口规模越大，亲属和邻居在个人网络中的数量越少。三个城市在网络好友总数方面没有差异；然而，大城市的受访者有更多的朋友住在离自己30到90分钟路程的地方，即使在控制了所有其他变量之后。第二组调查于2005年进行。这是对东京市中心一个社区的案例研究，使用问卷对300名社区协会成员进行了采访。此外，对该协会的官员进行了密集的采访。通过这些访谈，我们能够分析社区居民的个人网络是如何随着社区结构的变化而变化的。

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.