Size of Community of Residence as a Predictor of Attitudes toward Extramarital Sexual Relations

Five national surveys collected by the National Opinion Research Center between 1973 and 1980 were employed to investigate the relationship between attitudes toward extramarital sexual relations and a group of predictor variables that included variables identified in previous research and a measure of size of community of present residence. The results indicate that size of community was strongly and directly related to extramarital attitudes, along with premarital sexual permissiveness, level of education, and marital happiness/status. The report closes with a discussion of the continuing importance of ruralurban differences in attitude formation within American culture and in the process of social change.