Robert D. Putnam's Bowling Alone

In 1995, Robert D. Putnam had released his highly influential book, Bowling Alone: The collapse and Revival of American Community; He interests the readers by informing them the ways that the United States has withdrawn from civic engagement over a period of time. And this decline has crippled the civil society. The research he presents indicates he is correct to a certain extent in his statement that Americans have disconnected civically. Putnam has developed a common framework for understanding this phenomenon which he refers to as “social capital” which refers to social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. It is the principal theory of generalized reciprocity which leads to social capital as it …show more content…
First, the survey reflected on the demographics of the participant by asking questions about gender, year in school, race and etc. The next section focused on friendships where questions were asked on two types of friends. The first kind of friendship were the people you call friends; these are people you enjoy doing things with or whose company enjoy. Other were your close friends; people you can trust and turn to if you needed support. The following questions were about social change with two different sections. The final section focused on the social participation question, which will be the focus of my research paper, specifically focusing on volunteering. The method that I used to sample this survey was random, not in statistical term, but participants that were convenient to reach out to. The participants include those that were physically close to me (roommates, friends, people in my classes), however, the entire sample included Indiana University students. The survey was conducted orally by meeting with the participants face-to-face and reading the exact words that was on the survey. This ensured that every participant answered the questions with having the same knowledge about the survey in mind which eliminated interview bias. The survey included three hundred and forty-six participants. However, one of the participants in the survey had questionable …show more content…
To collection this data, participants were asked, if they worked for pay? In addition, information of their job status (job or no job) was collaborated with the average number of times volunteered to see if there was a relationship that affected volunteering. One of the participants chose not to answer the question about their job status so that information could not be accounted for and that participant was excluded from the data. The results show that if a person has a job, they are less likely to volunteer vs. a person who does not. This is shown in the graph as it indicates that the participants who did not have a job, volunteered more placing the average at 1.2589. On the other hand, the participants who did have a job, volunteered less placing the average at .8. This graph validates my hypothesis that people are more likely to volunteer if they do not have a job. In fact, these results also side with Putnam’s claim on declining social participation is also correct. There is a 0.4587 difference in between the participants who do and do not have a job, making the having the job a factor for the community engage (social participation) to decline. Even though people without a job volunteered more on average than those with a job, it is still a relatively low average. Putnam would use this information to say that social participation is still