Location and Lifestyle: The Comparative Explanatory Ability of Urbanism and Rurality.

Using data from three national surveys, this paper focuses on two questions pivotal to the issue of rural-urban differences. First, defining rurality in terms of residence, do attitudinal differences remain among the rural and urban residents independent of differences generated by other potent variables? Second, will any increase in the predictive utility of rurality be generated by use of a composite definition (residence plus lifestyle)? On the bases of the close and consistent behavorial and symbolic association of abstinence with rural life and consumption with urban life, drinking of alcoholic beverages was selected as the indicator of rural-urban lifestyles. Rural-metropolitan residence held its own in the company of other established predictors in explaining differences in attitudes. Further, the addition of a lifestyle indicator clearly increased the predictive utility of the rural-urban variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]