Making Acquaintances Investigating how quickly acquaintances are made John Stevens Introduction As Britons become increasing mobile, the ability to form social relations in new locations increases in importance. This poster investigates how quickly people develop associations with others Method To collect this data, I gave books of 80 blank pages to seven people, and asked them to circulate these books among people they know. The books contained instructions affixed to the front. I employed a free listing experimental design, and asked participants to write down as many surnames of people that they knew well (excluding members of their family) as they could remember. After completing the list, I then asked participants to mark a * next to the names of all people who lived within 10 miles of their own home, as well as to record their own sex, first half of their post code, and the number of years that they had lived within 10 miles of them. Sample Seven people living in different areas of the Eastern Region of England collected 96 lists using 5 books which they passed to people they encountered during the regular weekly activities who they could persuade to participate in my study with minimal input from myself between December 2003 and March The final sample included 95 participants: 43(44.8%) men and 53(55.2) women. The Participants had spent a mean number of years living within 10 miles of their current addresses (standard deviation=11.74). Under half 44(45.8%) lived in large towns or cities with populations above people, while the remaining 52(54.2%) lived in rural locations. The effect of gender Males in the sample reported adding acquaintances at a steady and increasing rate during there time in a community (shown in figure 3) while females kept an average of 27.8 acquaintances how ever long they lived in a community. Figure 3 – Number of reported contacts of a respondent by the number of years that the respondent reported living at their present address The effect of location Respondents living in rural location report making acquaintances at a faster rate than respondents living in urban location Figure 4 – Number of reported contacts living less than 10 miles away from a respondent by the number of years that the respondent reported living within 10 miles of their present address The affect of the number of years in a location Surprisingly, participants did not tend to lose touch with people living further away overtime. Most respondents reported knowing nearly 21 distant acquaintances (mean=21.4) however long they had lived in their present residential area (shown in Figure 1). The outliers included an academic holding an office in an international professional association, and a student studying at a university with a high proportion of international staff and students. Figure 1 – Number of reported contacts living more than 10 miles away from the respondent by the number of years that a respondent reported living within 10 miles of their present address The number of reported local acquaintances increases as people have lived for a longer period in the same area, though this relationship is not entirely linear. Figure 2 – Number of reported contacts living within 10 miles of the respondent by the number of years that a respondent reported living within 10 miles of their present address