Papago Indian Modernization: A Community Scale for Health Research.

Recent research in epidemiology has focused upon the relationship between rapid culture change and the health status of the participants. Many studies disclose that these transitional individuals suffer deleterious effects which can be attributed to the stresses generated by modification of their environment.Inquiry into the health consequences of culture change requires an instrument which will permit us to discern the level of modernization achieved by a particular community within a transitional social system. The present study describes the development and testing of such an instrument among the Papago Indians of southern Arizona, a tribe representing the entire spectrum of modernization phenomena from subsistence villages to urban enclaves.With the assistance of eight judges, 51 Papago Indian communities were scaled according to degree of modernization. The ratings obtained were subjected to several reliability tests and validated against conventional criteria of modernization: occupational structure...