Rural Social Science:
Now, More Important
Than Ever
By
Don A. Dillman*
Washington State University
Pullman, Washington
Regents Professor and the Thomas S. Foley Distinguished Professor of
Government and Public Policy in the Department of Community and Rural
Sociology, Department of Sociology and the Social and Economic Sciences
Research Center. http://www.sesrc.wsu.edu/dillman/
Overview
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Reflections on graduate education in the
1960s and the Beal-Bohlen shop
Rural Social Science: Topics and Tools
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Diffusion of Innovations
Surveys that Make a Difference
The Community Question
Why Rural Social Science is Now More
important than Ever
The Beal-Bohlen Shop
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Imagine 15-18 graduate students housed together
working on a lot of different projects for: the
Department of Defense, the Department of Social
and Health Services, USDA and others with:
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Attitude measurement—development of certainty scales.
Social action processes to encourage the adoption of
nuclear fall-out shelters.
Use of pesticides in homes and on farms.
Development of inter-organizational relationships to
provide treatment for alcoholism in seven Iowa cities.
Who had power and who did not in cities and communities.
What I Remember About the
Shop
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Klonglan and Warren making it a Four-Person
Leadership team.
Learn from other graduate students, especially the
older ones.
Loaned to other projects as needed and had to learn
to move from one topic to another.
Write reports for “users” (civil defense officials to
agency alcoholism directors) and peers with visuals.
Manage a budget; collaborate; supervise.
Do more than we were capable of doing.
Be able to “turn on a dime and shell out eight cents.”
What Did This Have to do With
Rural Iowa?
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At first blush, only a small amount—20 years later I
had a very different perspective.
I had no idea how much I would be building on
those experiences the rest of my career - directly
and indirectly.
Rural Places were being buffeted with incredible
change in the 60s. I thought it was about over.
I learned attitude measurement, inter-organizational
relations, survey data collection, community
organization, innovation and diffusion processes in
the context of becoming a mass society, and rural
places being simple extensions of urban centers.
A Few of the Things We Did
Not Envision
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A computer on every desk.
Long distance costing the same as local calls.
Color printers in every office.
Computers imbedded in cars and lawn mowers.
Free-trade agreements and just-in-time ordering and
manufacturing.
Every student submitting term papers by email.
Confined hog feeding operations.
Ethanol.
….and the list goes on and on
In the 1980s I Tried to Step
Back and Look at This:
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“Rural North America in the Information Age…” (The Social
Impacts of Information Technologies in Rural North America.
1984. Rural Sociology 50(1): 1-26.
The impact, and what I missed—cell phones, Internet and
Google.
Implication:
 No matter when we are learning or doing research, we do not do
a very good job of projecting very far ahead.
 The education we got as graduate students then (and now) has
to prepare us for something that no one really expects to have
happen.
 This is what is behind the theme for my comments that follow and
why Rural Social Science is now more important than ever.
Three Current Themes and
Their Roots in the Shop
Topic 1. The Diffusion of Innovations
Topic 2: An Unintended Career in Survey
Methodology
Topic 3: The Community Question and Rural
America
Topic 1. The Diffusion of
Innovations
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An old topic (early 1940s) and a personal oath of avoidance.
No-Till Drills in Palouse area of Washington State in the 1980s
 A farmer innovation, but very complex.
 Where did it come from and where is it going? Networks must be
relevant.
 Prepared for a network analysis.
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Had done a 40x40 analysis of inter-organizational connections in the
Shop. An entire computer budget gone over night. (System Linkages
Among Women’s Organizations, Beal, Klonglan, Yarbrough, Bohlen and
Dillman, 1966)
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In 1988, we asked 180 farmers about interaction with180 other
farmers--The available software would only handle 36 farmers at
a time!
The Tree Fruit Commission in
2007
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How do growers decide and how are they influenced by global
exchanges and markets?
How does heterogeneity of production get preserved and what
kinds of market development needs to happen?
What should all actors be doing now to have a future in 2015.
Conclusion: We now have the tools for understanding innovation
and diffusion to answer questions we never thought of asking
before. Diffusion may not be an “individual” question as much as
it is a group and global question.
Rural Social scientists can now contribute answers to such
questions, that could not be addressed, and weren’t even
relevant in the hybrid seed corn and even no-till agriculture days.
Topic 2: An Unintended Career
in Survey Methodology
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June 1969:
Beal: “Dillman, the mayor wants to know why the city hall bond issue was
defeated and if it should be put up to the voters again. Why don’t you round
up graduate students in the shop and find out.”
 So, we turned on a dime, and did it.
 What I did not know at the time was:
 Telephone surveys were not considered doable or valid; they just had
not been done.
 One year later I would be creating what may have been the first
university telephone survey research laboratory in the United States.
 In 1978, my book, Mail and Telephone Surveys, would appear in print.
 By 1985 the telephone would become the dominant survey methodology
for doing accurate general public surveys.
Why Sample Surveys are
Important:
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A probability based sample of 100 can provide
estimates of + or – 10% (1100 provides +or- 3
percent) for the entire country; it also takes that
many for a small city or county!
Sample surveys are essential for making national
estimates (unemployment rates, housing starts,
current employment levels, scientific person-power,
incidence of health problems, participation in
income-support programs, etc.) Without them the
nation cannot function.
What Defensive Driving Instruction and the Federal
Reserve have in common.
Fast Forward to: Sample
Surveys and Rural Populations
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National surveys cannot provide estimates for specific rural
areas. Even smaller states get lost in the estimates for most
surveys.
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The 2000 Decennial Census long form provided the last point-intime estimate for demographics of most rural counties and
smaller communities (at least 1 in 6 households completed it).
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The American Community Survey replaced it—it takes roll-up of
five years of data collection to get reasonable estimates for
counties of about 5,000 people. This means, e.g., “the poverty
rate over the last five years is estimated to be 5%.”
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When rapid change occurs in an area the ACS would not be
good enough for needed estimates.
What Does Population Change
Have to Do With Rural
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This probably means that the task of knowing
what happens in such populations will depend
increasingly upon sample surveyors with local
interests.
Increasingly, national data from sample
surveys will be focused on urban places in
particular and rural places in general.
Understanding dynamics of rural America
requires rural survey methods that work.
Another Worrisome Trend
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The telephone is close to not working for surveys of the general
public.
Response rates have declined greatly, and coverage is getting
worse because of cell phones—we are being forced to change
methods.
Only 70% of the households have Internet access, and the
computer literacy level is significantly less. Access to private
computer networks and poor response rates are also a problem.
I have not experienced a time when I thought it was more
important that significant research investments be made in how
to do quality surveys, especially in rural places. We need rural
social science to do that.
Topic 3. The Community
Question and Rural America
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In the mid-1980s I thought rural communities could
be described as existing in three different eras.
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The community control era—communities mostly controlled
the lives of people who lived there (horizontal ties).
The mass society —communities affected larger from the
outside, and largely in the same way (vertical ties).
The Information age —the capacity was being instilled
individually and to organizations to connect to and be
influenced by anyone anywhere at anytime.
Strength
Community
Control
1900
1950
Year
2000
Mass
Society
Strength
Community
Control
1900
1950
Year
2000
Mass
Society
Information
Age
Strength
Community
Control
1900
1950
Year
2000
Putting the Parts Together
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Perspective; James Michenor and Centennial
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Gold veins forming in earth crust
Dinosaurs and other extraordinary animals
Humans from direction of Alaska
Development of large Indian nations
First settlers from the east
The wagon caravans and farmers along the Platte
Mining
Long horns from Texas
Herefords from England
The cross-breeds
People of Mexican descent
Industry and urbanization
And, that was only into the ‘60s
Every era had forces trying to prevent the next era from forming.
Why should I think change stops here?
What is different in one rural
place; (Chariton, Lucas County)
1950’s
2000’s
Many General Farms….......
Few large CB Farms (1 for 7?)
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Minimal Erosion Control
Clean ditches………………..
Significant erosion control; no till,
Grassed waterways
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Country Farmsteads
John Deere for tillage…….
Country Homesteads
John Deere mowers
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Nicest Homes in town……….
Nicest Homes in Country
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Rural Wastelands……………
Protected wetlands
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What is different in one rural
place; (Chariton, Lucas County) 2
1950’s
Business Headquarters
Eye-sight control….
2000’s
Business Services that are
Computer control from Des M.
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Thriving town square for goods
and services...
A different town square; localized
services; real estate, insurance
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Residential periphery…
Business periphery
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Local clientele…………
Regional clientele
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Highway through
Square………………….
Highway By-pass
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What is different in one rural
place; (Chariton, Lucas County) 3
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Town Docs; nursing home…
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One-way commute………….
Coordinated Life care; Home
care; asst. living
1 ½ way commute
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Church buildings
Religious complexes
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Football and baseball fields
Athletic complexes
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Dilapidated old buildings
Historic Preservation
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Place-to-place communication
Home to business
Point to point communication
Person to person
Are these observations
correct?
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I don’t know.
If there has been a decline in the capacity to get
things done in communities, there seems to be an
amazing amount happening.
It’s easier to see a decline in the standard we
developed for the past than to envision a new
standard that we may be evolving towards.
Inequality and effects of two-job/career households
very hard to quanitfy.
The reason we do research is to get past
unsystematic observations like these.
Community in the Beal and
Bohlen Shop
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Focus on Geographic entities.
Who has power (formal and informal) and how do they use
it.
What steps does one take to instigate meaningful
community action.
How does one connect vertical and horizontal processes.
Today’s reality
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A much bigger geography.
Interconnection built more on interests, less on geography.
Human Capital more individualized; dispersed group ties.
Communication ties that link people intensively wherever
they wish to connect.
“Rural Space” Questions Need to
be Posed and Meticulously
Researched:
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Does the Internet/cell phone pull interests away from
locality?
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How much economic opportunity is home-based, the
lone-eagle or extended office.
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How are they being used to pull interests towards
“locality”. How do meaningful localities deal with
heterogeneity of interests?
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Does dual employment (by person or household) a
buffer that encourages risk-taking and creates greater
opportunity.
“Rural Space” Questions Need
to be Researched:
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What natural processes can be enhanced to
provide effective social action? How big is
locality, if it exists at all?
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The Internet may be only one tiny part of these
processes, but it seems to be part of the larger
question of networks as well.
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Many of these questions will not get addressed
unless rural social scientists do it.
Iowa and Change
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Iowa and particularly Southern Iowa has been my
referent for understanding a lot of rural change in
the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
On a personal level I find the change overwhelming,
but I do not in a minute believe we are finally
achieving a “steady-state.”
I did not expect “ethanol.” But, now find myself
wondering as much about the post-ethanol era as I
do the current one still under development.
Rural Social Science needs to foster thinking about
that and other global changes that affect rural quality
of life.
From Being Educated to
Making a Difference
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The Beal-Bohlen Shop challenged us to
apply existing sociology, but also to reach out
for new applications, and if they didn’t exist,
to invent them.
It also taught us to be concerned with apply
our research.
Breadth of interest was required. Immersing
ourselves in a small niche area to the
exclusion of everything else wasn’t
acceptable.
From Being Educated to
Making a Difference--2
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I have discussed only a few issues that have
been relevant to my career.
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Innovation and Diffusion of technologies.
Sample survey methods.
Community and rural space questions.
Other Beal-Bohlen “alums” would have
discussed other issues.
Perhaps it was the “method” that made a
difference.
Towards The Future
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Rural places now connect to the world more tightly
than they once connected to the railroads.
The challenges facing rural areas have changed,
and we now have social science tools that seemed
impossible a decade or two ago.
We need to anticipate the next transitions and work
our way through them in ways less painful and less
disruptive than they would otherwise be.
Sociology at Iowa State has a tradition of doing that
and I hope it will continue.