Sixteen questions dealing with racial equality, abortion, and civil liberties were extracted from the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Surveys of 1972 (N=986) and 1980 (N=1,128) to seek a possible cultural component of rurality and note any changing contours to such a phenomenon over time and across social strata. Rural sociology's ongoing search for a nominal and operational definition has generally accepted three broad components of "rural": ecological, occupational, and cultural, with "rural culture" perceived as being relatively reluctant to shed established mores. Sixteen questions clearly could not cover what might be considered the domain of "rural culture," but did focus on social issues representative of a turbulent historical period of change. Findings suggested that attitude structures changed little over the decade, while levels of conservatism showed a statistically significant increase. The overall explanatory structure (both slopes and intercepts) changed although levels of education and levels of church attendance had consistent (but inverse) impacts on degree of conservatism. Size of place of current residence was conspicuously absent as an important predictor. Since size of place is the most often used proxy for rural versus urban milieu, caution was urged in interpreting much of the literature on rural-urban differences. (BRR)