Previous research has shown that farm-to-urban migrants differ in various ways from urban-reared persons. Studies of differences among persons with a farm or rural background and urban-reared persons who now all live in the same urban areas have been lacking in Iowa. One of the purposes of this study was to provide such information for an Iowa metropolitan area. The main purpose, however, was to compare characteristics among adolescents from several family-migration types. These were adolescents who had always lived in Cedar Rapids (the metropolitan area selected for study), adolescents who had moved from other urban centers to Cedar Rapids and adolescents who had lived on farms at some previous time and now live in Cedar Rapids. These three family-migration types are referred to as urban-nonmigrant, urban-migrant and farm-to-urban migrant.

Data were obtained first by questionnaires from practically all adolescents in the seventh and eleventh grades of the Cedar Rapids schools. Questionnaires also were mailed to their parents. The comparisons among the children and parents in the three family-migration types were based on white families in which both parents were living with the adolescents who represented their families in the original sample. The urban-nonmigrant sample included 582 families, the urban-migrant sample included 391 families, and the farm-to-urban sample included 208 families.