Shock news: neighbourliness might or might not be in decline

There are two surveys of neighbourliness around at the moment, one I already trailed, carried out by YouGov for Co-Operatives UK, the other carried out by Fresh Minds for Gumtree.

It's great to have some data to get to grips with all of a sudden. I'll prepare a more detailed review as there is likely to be an event anounced soon, so just a few thoughts right now. I'm using the Co-Ops report written by Ed Mayo, I can't find the questions that were asked or any other data; and a preliminary summary of the Gumtree research, no final version being available yet. I'm grateful to Gumtree for permission to quote from this document.

The big headline from the Co-Ops study is that people in the UK are 'less than half' as neighbourly in 2010 as they were in 1982 when a set of interviews were carried out by MORI. As I mentioned the other day, their 'Good Neighbour Index' is based on 'the total number of people helped by their neighbours divided by the number whose neighbours have given them problems', so the statistic comes as no surprise.

You'd want to take account (the report doesn't) of the possibility that in 2010 people might more frequently and readily get some forms of help, like emotional and financial support, from remote others (beyond the neighbourhood) than they did in 1982. You could also speculate that there are more and better opportunities to report nuisance behaviour to authorities now than in the past, which encourages people to describe certain forms of behaviour as giving them problems. At the very least you'd reflect on the fact that the 2010 survey was carried out online and the 1982 survey wasn't. And maybe take account of significant changes in average household size.

Points like these are more by way of explanation for the statistic than challenging it directly: but they do raise the question of whether the model of neighbourliness represented by the Co-Ops index is capable of accommodating shifts in the social role of neighbouring. The study presents a chummy model of neighbouring which is essentially about helping each other out.

Many people prefer a model of neighbouring which is based on an ongoing respect for privacy coupled with mutual recognition, so that help can be mobilised in case of need. If you were measuring neighbourliness for that model, you'd ask different questions and expect to come up with a different answer.

The Gumtree report is determinedly upbeat, with  more of an emphasis on attitudes to neighbourhood than on behaviour within it. The main headline is eyebrow-raisingly counter-intuitive:

27% of people with a long commute to work every day know 11 or more of their neighbours, whereas the majority of those who commute less know only 0-3 neighbours.

As with the Co-Ops and so many studies, what is meant by 'knowing' a neighbour appears to be 'know by name', which just perpetuates the unfortunate habit of over-privileging strong ties in the understanding of local social relations. This study is also an online survey, incidentally, and some thought needs to be given as to how that affects the results.

A second headline from the Gumtree findings is that neighbourliness has increased during the past 18 months. The researchers say that:

Even though we couldn’t detect a clear correlation between the recession and neighbourliness, people across the nation did indicate having tried to be friendlier and more neighbourly in the last 18 months.

I need to go deeper into some of this material but for the moment there are three areas to reflect on:

 

• The Co-Ops research raises for me what might be a critical issue of 'crossing the threshold'. It seems that people are far less likely to go into one another's homes. The americans call it 'refrigerator rights'. In the 1982 study to which the Co-Ops survey is compared, 26 per cent of respondents said they never called round next door. The proportion of responses in 2010 is 43 per cent. The decline could be related to changes in average household size, because smaller households create fewer reasons for mutual friendly invasion. Having an online sample is likely to cause distortion. There are various other possible factors of course, including the kinds of thing which lead people to keep their doors locked and not answer anyone. We need to keep an eye on this one.
• Nuisance neighbours: has there really been a rise? The Co-Ops research suggests a doubling and the world of anecdote supports that. The past couple of days I've been in Shipley, attending a housing and environment committee meeting, hovered a few hours in the community centre, followed by a street reps meeting, and there's no shortage of stories about difficult neighbours. We need to explore these findings: is it worse in general, worse in terms of severity of offence, or not much different? I heard a story yesterday about a deranged individual throwing a tv out of a flat three floors up; but I heard of exactly the same in Ruislip, west London, in about 1976.
• The lending of keys. I'm a great believer in this as an indicator of trust at the most local level, and it's helpful that both these surveys asked about it. Unfortunately they don't clearly distinguish holding a neighbour's key from having one's key held by another, but here's a little comparison:

Keys held by neighbour

Manchester neighbourliness review (2004): 26% (49% for those aged 65-74 yrs)
Co-Ops survey (2010): 27%
Gumtree (2010): 45%

I've no idea how the discrepency can be explained, but it is perhaps a little warning about drawing conclusions from a single set of data.

Finally, the Gumtree report finds that people want to be more involved locally but often are unsure how to take the first step. The classic example is when they miss the chance to introduce themselves to new neighbours, and find years later that they still haven't because a comparably straightforward opportunity does not arise. The report raises important questions about what devices - like street parties or online networks - might be appropriate to help people form connections. The data we are sifting through in the Networked Neighbourhoods study should help here: watch this space (or this one).

 

Comments

[Paul Foley]

Interesting blog, thanks.

Like you I have tried to find source information (see http://today.yougov.co.uk/life/no-longer-such-good-neighbours, the ‘survey details and full results’ link does not work).

I share your concerns about online surveys like YouGov (that cannot be dispelled if survey details are not provided).

The core middle class affluent male base of internet users has been diluted. But those least likely to be connected are still the least wealthy and older age groups.

In many of the more deprived and older communities I have worked with in recent years there is a greater feeling of neighbourilness (clear definition required) than other more affluent suburbs and villages. This is obviously not caused by access or not to internet. But if you omit deprived or older communities with low levels of internet access from your survey you are likely to end up with very spurious results.

But I could be totally wrong, did I mention they did not provide details of the survey?

It’s been a while since we met. Keep up the good work.

[Kevin Harris]

Paul - good to hear from you and thanks for this.

One thing to keep an eye on is use of Facebook as a driver for online use in low income neighbourhoods.
k

[Catriona Worsley]

While reading your page it occurred to me that you might be interested in this small scale survey which relates neighbourliness to traffic flow www.streetsalive.org.uk/traffic-community-research.aspx
The author is a transport campaigner, who moves (slowly!) between Bristol and San Francisco, and blogs at http://onthelevelblog.wordpress.com/

[Paul Foley]

The following comment was sent by Paul Foley but did not load:

Kevin

Further to our brief telephone conversation about your Facebook comment. As mentioned this contribution is pedantic, but perhaps little known.

I am working on an EC project that is looking at the characteristics of social network/media users as a precursor to developing applications that will better enable citizens to become involved in the policymaking process.

One element of this work has been to look at the socio-economic characteristics of users of different social media. There is considerable variance between the use of different social media by gender, age, education and income. There are also differences between European countries.

The most used social media in the UK amongst the least wealthy (of six cohorts) are friendfeed (61 per cent of users come from this group), Xanga (47 per cent) and Netvibes (43 per cent). Facebook is the second equal most used by the wealthiest cohort (26 per cent of users in this group). The most used by the wealthy cohort are Linkedin (36 per cent) and Wikipedia (26 per cent).

There is a lesson to be learnt here for local partnerships and other organisations about their use of social media to interact with citizens. They are not all the same and use of one social media type might alienate or miss particular types of users. Social media platforms are perhaps best thought of as series of different social groups, rather than as one homogeneous route to citizens.

Sorry to be pedantic.

[Julian Dobson]

Fascinating post. In my experience, expressions of neighbourliness seem to depend on a kind of cultural microclimate that you need to live in to appreciate.

A couple of examples. When our eldest daughter was born we lived in a terraced house in East Ham, east London. Neighbourly interaction happened over the back garden fence - so much so that when we passed our baby over the fence for our elderly neighbour to hold, we soon found she was rapidly disappearing down the street, being passed from neighbour to neighbour. But we would never go in each others' houses.

A few years later we lived a couple of miles to the north in Manor Park. Here neighbourly interaction happened on the street, because that's where the kids tended to play or where people met on the way to school. Again, people tended not to go in each other's houses, but at Eid people would share food with neighbours (including non-Muslims).

Where I am now, in Sheffield, people occasionally invite each other round (one neighbour used to put on firework parties and invite the street) and trust each other with keys. They also take in parcels and there are a fair few back garden conversations and exchanges of plants. And I think people would help each other in a crisis, although they wouldn't make a show of it.

I'm not sure you can draw any great principles from this except the obvious, which is that you're more likely to get on with your neighbours if you see them frequently - over the garden fence or in the street. Tell fences and hedges and a lot of through traffic may have as great a deterrent effect as our fear or suspicion of the people.

[dp]

Where does neighbourliness get described? That's aimed at both of these surveys, and more generally. What are we thinking of when we use the word?

[Kevin Harris]

hi DP - you ask where neighbourliness gets described. I had a go at this in a book called Neighbouring and older people (available here http://is.gd/S56y1v), see chapter 2.