THE IMPACT OF PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL SATISFACTION ON PERCEPTIONS OF RURAL AND URBAN - SOME ANALYTIC EVIDENCE

Studies of rural-urban location decisions traditionally used an a prio ri definition of rural/urban based on population size. A group of 29 p hysicians (study group) practising in communities of less than 10000, that were part of a larger sample, perceived their communities as 'urb an'. A matched group of physicians (control group) in the same communi ties, who perceived the communities as 'rural', was selected. The rese arch question raised was: Are there personal and professional factors that could reliably predict the perception of rural and urban? A logis tic regression analysis was done using professional and personal satis faction items as predictors of the two groups. The analysis gives some evidence that, once the effect of community size is removed, the perc eption of rural urban can be explained by satisfaction with the follow ing: (i) access to specialist expertise, (ii) quality of education for children, (iii) quality of life for children and (iv) quality of hous ing; satisfaction with size of community was not a significant predict or of rural/urban perception.