Two Harvard Professors Will Study the Nature Of City-Citizen Bond

Two Harvard professors will direct a study this summer to see what the average citizen expects of the city he lives in.

Edward C. Banfield, Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Urban Government, and James Q. Wilson, associate professor of Government, will conduct the survey for the Harvard-M.I.T. Joint Center for Urban Studies.

The survey will not study how the urban voter stands on national problems, but will seek to learn something about the nature of the city-citizen bond -- a largely unexplored question. A random sample of Boston voters will be asked what they think the city may demand of them, and what they think it owes them.

Although the precise questions will not be released until the survey is completed, they could presumably range from garbage collection to matters of school policy. However, none of the questions will deal specifically with Boston, Wilson said last week. "We will not ask people what they think of Mrs. Hicks (controversial member of Boston's School Committee's)," he added.

Some eight Harvard students and a team of professional interviewers from the Community Research Project of Boston will conduct the interviews in several hundred Boston homes this summer.

One portion of the people to be interviewed was selected in a totally random fashion -- any Boston voter having as much chance of being chosen as any other. The remainder was chosen randomly from certain designated neighborhoods, in order to over-represent minority groups. If this were not done, Wilson said, minorities would be represented in numbers too small to be meaningful.

Also Detroit

Part of the Boston questionnaire is being administered in Detroit this summer, under the supervision of the University of Michigan. Twenty years ago in Detroit, a survey something like the Boston study was conducted, but "not with our questions," Wilson said.

Answers to the 54-page questionnaire will be analyzed this fall, and the results will be presented in a paper. Eventually, Wilson hopes, a book may be written on the study.