Neal Gross was from an urban background in Milwaukee, Wiscrindin and initially felt somewhat uncomfortable interviewing lowa farmers Someone in Ames told Gross that farm people got up very early in the morning, so on his first day of data gathering, he arrived at a respondent's home at 6:00 A while it was still half dark. By the end of this first day Gross had interviewed twenty-one people, and he averaged an incredible fourteen interviews per day for the entire study! Today, a survey interviewer who averages four interviews per day is considered hardworking During ne personal interview, an Iowa farmer, perhaps slyly leading him on, asked Gross for advice about controlling horse nettles. Gross had never heard of horse nettles. He told the farmer that he should call a veterinarian to look at his sick horse (horse nettles are actually a kind of noxious weed) Neal Gross personally interviewed 345 farmers in the two lowa commu nities, but twelve farmers operating less than twenty acres were discarded from the data analysis, as were 74 respondents who had started farming after hybrid corn began to diffuse. Thus, the data analysis was based.