1 Several colleagues reviewed this report and offered numerous helpful suggestions. They include Dr. Peter Levine and Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg at CIRCLE, David B. Smith at the National Conference on Citizenship, Dr. Terri Fine at the University of
Central Florida, and John Bridgeland at Civic Enterprises. We are deeply grateful for their help. Remaining errors of omission and commission are, of course, ours.
2 U. S. Census Bureau, The 2009 Statistical Abstract available at http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/rankings.html.
3 Putnam, Robert D. , “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy, Volume 6, Number 1, January 1995, pp. 65-78
4 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: an annotated text backgrounds interpretations edited by Isaac Kramnick, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007, Ch. 12.
5 See http://www.americangrace.org/.
6 The United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines metropolitan statistical areas according to published standards that are applied to Census Bureau data. The general concept of a metropolitan statistical area is that of a core area containing a substantial population nucleus, together with adjacent communities having a high degree of economic and social integration with that core. Currently defined metropolitan statistical areas are based on application of 2000 standards to 2000 decennial census data. Current metropolitan statistical area definitions were announced by OMB effective June 6, 2003. Each metropolitan statistical area must have at least one urbanized area of 50,000 or more inhabitants.
7 See Volunteering in America at http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov/.
8 This analytical strategy draws on work done by the Corporation for Community and National Service in their annual report, Volunteering in America. The current, as well as previous reports may be found at http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov/.
9 Corporation for National and Community Service, Office of Research and Policy development, Volunteering in America: 2007 City Trends and Rankings, Washington, DC 2007, p. 5.
10 Ibid., p. 6.
11 Ibid., p. 7.
12 Ibid., p. 8.
13 U. S. Census Bureau, The 2009 Statistical Abstract, Table 12. Resident Population—States, available at http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/population/estimates_and_projections--states_metropolitan_areas_cities.html.
14 Florida Economic Estimating Conference, Florida Economic Outlook, Tallahassee: Office of Economic & Demographic Research, July 7, 2009. Accessed at http://edr.state.fl.us/conferences/fleconomic/FEEC0907_execsumm.pdf.
15 Office of Economic & Demographic Research, Florida: An Economic Overview – August 4, 2009, accessed at http://edr.state.fl.us/presentations/recentpresentations/Fl%20Economic%20Overview_8-4-09.pdf.
16 The Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy, “State Budget Bolstered by Temporary Federal Stimulus Funds and Still Fails to Meet Needs,” accessed at http://www.fcfep.org/newversion/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=84:recent-article-4-&catid=34:fcfep-publications&Itemid=207
17 This is drawn from the central argument made in the National Conference on Citizenship’s, America’s Civic Health 2009.
18 Our measure of community engagement was constructed based on respondent’s answers to five questions. They included whether in the past year they 1) belonged to or donated money to a group or association; 2) volunteered; 3) went to a club or community meeting; 4) attended a public meeting where there was a discussion of community affairs; and 5) worked with others in the neighborhood to solve a community problem. A community engagement score was computed by summing the number of activities in which the respondent had participated. Respondents scoring zero were designated “unengaged.”
Respondents who participated in one to three activities were designated “moderately engaged.” Respondents who participated in four or five activities were designated “highly engaged.”
19 Sean C. Stafford, Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown: Social Embeddedness and the Transformation of the Rust Belt. Ph.D. Dissertation, Boston: Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June, 2004, p22.
20 Ibid., p. 174.
21 Ibid,
22 Ibid., p. 178.
23 Harry Boyte and Nan Skelton, Minnesota’s Civic Health Index 2009: A State with a Vibrant Civic Culture Navigates the Rapids of Change, Minneapolis: The Hubert H. Humphrey Institute,
University of Minnesota, 2009.
24 Robert Putnam and David Campbell outlined major findings of work that will be published as American Grace: How Religion is Reshaping our Civic and Political Lives. The Pew Conference held in Key West, Florida. A summary of the presentation may be found in Daniel Burke “Religious people make better citizens, study says” Religion News Service, http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=18088, May 13, 2009
25 Burke, op. cit.
26 Ibid.
27 Respondents were asked whether they had made use of each of the following: email; my own blog; commenting or writing on someone else’s blog; a social networking site like MySpace or Facebook; Facebook’s “Causes” application; by making a photo, video, or audio and sharing it online; commenting on someone else’s photo, video, or audio; chat room; instant messaging; text messaging; voting in favor of or against a video or a news story on
a site like YouTube or Digg; watching a speech by a presidential candidate online; watching a video that supports or opposes a presidential candidate; and going to a website to give money to a candidate. To create a measure of internet technology use, the number of activities were summed. The resulting scale was recoded into three groups: those who did not use internet technology at all, those who used the internet in 1 or 2 ways, and those who use the internet in 3 or more ways.
28 Because of the limited number of cases in the sample and the need to control for educational attainment, we have categorized community engagement here as “any level of engagement.” Thus, for this analysis, respondents were grouped into those who were completely uninvolved in their communities and those who undertook at least one civic activity in the past 12 months.