An Empirical Assessment of Social Disorganization in a Rural Context.

In their classic study, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1920), Thomas and Znaniecki state that "social disorganization is not an exceptional phenomenon limited to certain periods or certain societies; some of it is found always and everywhere." The purpose of the present paper is to assess the applicability of social disorganization as it relates to a domain that has been predominately excluded from past analyses. Specifically, the present study makes use of data from the Montana Prevention Needs Assessment Survey (1998) to assess the degree to which aggregate measures of community structure and individually perceived measures of community process have an impact on the outcome of delinquent behavior. In doing so, it makes a unique contribution in its use of aggregate and individual-level data, and its application of a predominately urban theory to a rural context. The study finds that both community structure and process do have a statistically significant impact in the present data. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]