Each of these approaches to the
problem of measuring trends in
civic engagement has advantages
and drawbacks. Membership
records offer long-term coverage
and reasonable precision, but they
may underrepresent newer, more
vibrant organizations. Time budgets
capture real investments of time
and energy in both formal and informal
settings, not merely nominal
membership, but the available data
are episodic and drawn from relatively
small samples that are not
entirely comparable across time.
Surveys are more comprehensive in
their coverage of various types of
groups, but (apart from church attendance)
comparable trend data
are available only since the mid-
1970s, a decade or more after the
putative downturn began, so they
may understate the full decline. No
single source is perfect for testing
the hypothesized decline in social
connectedness, although the consistency
across different measuring
rods is striking