Phoenix Area Social Survey I - performed during 2001 in the Central Arizona-Phoenix area

Our main objective in the Phoenix Area Social Study (PASS) is to examine the reciprocal relationships, or the interplay, between the social and natural environments in an urban ecosystem. In order to understand this complex process, social scientists affiliated with the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) project propose to conduct a longitudinal social survey of residents in the Phoenix-Mesa Area MSA. The survey will measure the social ties of individuals to their communities, values and sentiments regarding communities, behaviors that affect the natural environment, and satisfaction with the quality of life in the area. The community that people experience most intimately is the neighborhood. Our central research questions ask how neighborhood social ties, values, and behaviors are connected with one another in ways that reflect willingness to act socially and politically with respect to the environment, and how changing environmental conditions, in turn, affect the quality of human life.