Selected Attitudes and Opinions of Michigan's Rural Population. Research Report 169, Development and Public Affairs.

The attitudes and opinions of rural Michigan residents were surveyed on selected issues and policies in 1970. The sample included 343 respondents drawn from 34 randomly selected sampling points. Each point was a rural township from which about 10 interviews were made. Responses of the 88 farm and 255 nonfarm residents were compared in the study. Some major areas covered in the interviews were farm policy, political tactics, strikes by farm workers, and the family farm. It was found that meaningful differences in attitudes on certain social issues existed between rural subgroups, that including the respondent's sex as a control variable led to additonal insights, that farm males always supported positions interpreted as favorable to agriculture, and that the nonfarm female clearly reflected the consumer orientation. It was noted that, while it was difficult to draw many generalizations from this limited study, sex should be taken into account in future studies of farm families. (PS)