Ten separate 1890 Land-Grant Universities and Tuskegee Institute cooperatively conducted a 10-state southern regional research project, "The Isolation of Factors Related to Patterns and Levels of Living in the Rural South," which elicited household and demographic data on 2,580 rural families. The 10 contiguous southeastern states which composed the research sites are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Data were collected in late 1981 through interviews with heads of households and examined six major areas: demographic characteristics; occupation characteristics; community and life satisfaction; agency utilization and client satisfaction; attitudes, values, and beliefs; and consumer behavior and income. The median age for respondents was 45 years or over; more white than black heads of households were surveyed in most states; and fewer than 50% of the heads of household had completed high school, except in Virginia (55%). This basebook provides a history of the project and a description of how the project was conducted. Descriptive tables report frequency distributions within each of the 10-state samples. Numerous subsections within each of the six major areas provide narrative, tables, and information about the survey instrument, where applicable. A bibliography and a discussion of the sampling procedure conclude the basebook. (BRR)