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Measuring Social Capital in Surveys

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Title: Measuring Social Capital in Surveys


1
Measuring Social Capital in Surveys
  • Christian Haerpfer,
  • Claire Wallace and Florian Pichler
  • School of Social Science

2
Diverse theories, similar empirical indicators
  • C. Welzel, R. Inglehart, F.Deutsch 2005
  • Despite a great variety of theoretical
    approaches, empirical analyses of social capital
    are surprisingly similar.Virtually all of them
    treat membership in voluntary associations as the
    chief indicator of community involvement. p.121

3
Sources of indicators
  • Eurobarometer Social Capital Survey 62.2
    fielded in November 2004 in 27 European countries
    (all EU states plus Romania and Bulgaria) PIs
    C.Wallace C.Haerpfer
  • New Democracies Barometer-NDB 6 survey fielded
    in January 2002 in CIS countries (Russia,
    Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia,
    Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan) PIs C.Haerpfer
    C.Wallace N18.428

4
Indicators of social capital
  • Participation in voluntary associations/civil
    society
  • Social networks and social support
  • Trust (generalised trust and trust in
    institutions)
  • Civic mindedness (norms and civic responsibility)
  • (Other dimensions sometimes included feeling of
    security, getting things done, political action,
    elite-challenging activities)

5
Trust 1. Generalised Trust
  • Generalised trust highly correlated with
    membership of organisations at national level but
    not individual level.
  • More nuanced approach in ESS includes fairness
    and helpfulness. Improvement on single item
    measure used in EB and WVS
  • PROBLEMS
  • Large variations across Europe. General trust
    generally low (between 10 and 35 across EU27)
    but very high in Nordic countries (Nordic
    exceptionalism?)
  • Is trust measuring the outcomes or causes of
    social capital rather than social capital itself?

6
Trust 2 Trust in institutions
  • C.Haerpfer, C.Wallace and M.Raiser (2005)
    Formal Social Capital Trust in Institutions
  • Major outcome of NDB 6 analysis for CIS
  • Trust in political institutions
    (government,parliament, judiciary etc.)
    constitutes indicator (alpha0.90)
  • Social trust (media, churches, health care
    system) constitutes different dimension of formal
    social capital

7
Civic Mindedness
  • This is usually measured by looking at a range of
    normative situations (eg. Accepting a bribe, not
    paying on public transport etc.)
  • It helps to measure the way in which social
    capital reinforces social norms
  • Not clear if this is an outcome or a cause of
    social capital rather than social capital itself.
  • PROBLEMS
  • The way this was asked in the EB was to ask about
    what made a good citizen. It proved almost
    impossible to analyse. The WVS question was the
    better one.
  • Need to set it in the context of political and
    economic situation of the country

8
Participation in civil society
  • List of range of organisations
  • Need to distinguish active participation,
    volunteering and passive memberships
  • Need to distinguish between types of associations
  • ResultsLarge variations across Europe (90
    Sweden, 25 Greece
  • Problems
  • Some memberships more obligatory in some
    countries (ie.trades unions in Sweden, churches
    in Germany).
  • Lack of organisations in Eastern and Southern
    Europe
  • Longer list tends to produce more participation
  • Does not take into account non-organisational
    participation (e.g. through internet
    mobilisations)

9
Social networks
  • Core concept of social capital but not adequately
    addressed in surveys
  • 2 Issues
  • Intensivity of social contacts (frequency of
    meetings with friends/neighbours etc.)
  • Extensivity of contacts (range of social
    contacts)
  • PROBLEMS
  • No idea of the quality of these relationships
  • Different semantic code of friends

10
Social support
  • Asks what help is expected, was given across a
    range of situations
  • Large European variations in social support, with
    the Nordic countries having the most. Variations
    also in kinds of social support.
  • Eastern Europe NDB 6 5item indicator
    (alpha0.84) of receiving social support
    (informal social capital)
  • PROBLEMS
  • Cultural understandings of what social support
    means
  • People in different life circumstances need
    different kinds of support
  • People in the South and East maybe turn to
    families first.

11
CONCLUSIONS
  • CORE CONCEPTS OF SOCIAL CAPITAL
  • 1. Participation in civil society-distinguish
    level of participation as well as different
    organisations (e.g.sociotropic vs. utilitarian).
  • Need to take into account associations that women
    join such as consumer associations as well as
    young people, such as the internet otherwise
    results in bias)
  • 2. Social networks and social support.
    (distinguish intensiveness of social contacts and
    extensiveness of social contacts bridging
    capital)
  • Need to look at quality of social relationships
    in terms of social support across a range of
    situations, bearing in mind cultural variations.
  • ASSOCIATED CONCEPTS
  • Generalised Trust
  • Trust in institutions
  • Civic mindedness

12
Conceptual framework of social capital
13
References
  • Christian W.Haerpfer, Claire Wallace and Martin
    Raiser (2005), Social Capital an Economic
    Performance in Post-Communist Societies, In
    S.M.Koniordos (Ed.), Networks, Trust and Social
    Capital (Ashgate Hants) pp.243-278

14
References
  • Christian Welzel, Ronald Inglehart and Franziska
    Deutsch (2005), Social Capital, Voluntary
    Associations and Collective Action Which aspects
    of social capital have the greatest civic
    payoff?, In Journal of Civil Society,
    vol12121-146
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