Massification Versus Differentiation: Some Trend Data from National Surveys

A trend study using responses to questions repeated on American national surveys at intervals of eight or more years does not support the belief that differences in attitudes and behavior among various categories of the population have generally diminished recently. The data indicate that the differences between rural and urban people and between males and females may have diminished moderately but that South-non-South, low-education-high-education, manual-nonmanual, white-nonwhite, and Protestant-Catholic differences probably have increased.