Voluntary Association Membership in Fifteen Countries: A Comparative Analysis
检验了美国人是否比其他国家的人更可能加入志愿协会的假设，使用近期数据并考虑十五个国家，发现美国在多数指标上领先，但排除教会会员后排名下降，部分国家甚至超越美国。
We test the hypothesis, dating from the work of Weber and Tocqueville, that Americans are more likely to become involved in voluntary associations than people of other nations. Compared to previous work, we employ more recent data and consider more countries. We also examine several different measures of membership levels : all memberships versus working memberships as well as membership including and excluding church or union memberships. Cross-national differences are examined before and after controls for education, employment status, size of community, gender, marital status, and age. Results show Americans at or near the top on most measures of membership, although this ranking drops significantly when church membership is excluded and drops even further when only working memberships are examined. In these instances, people from several countries, including Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, and Sweden, equal or surpass the membership levels of Americans, especially when controls are introduced. Some alternative intepretations of the cross-national differences in voluntary association activity are considered