Measuring Social Capital: An Integrated Questionnaire

By C. Grootaert, D. Narayan, M. Woolcock, Veronica Nyhan-Jones. 2004

1,025 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The idea of social capital has enjoyed a remarkable rise to prominence in both the theoretical and applied social science literature over the last decade. While lively debate has accompanied that journey, thereby helping to advance our thinking and to clarify areas of agreement and disagreement, much still remains to be done. One approach that we hope can help bring further advances for both scholars and practitioners is the provision of a set of empirical tools for measuring social capital. The purpose of this paper is to introduce such a tool-the Integrated Questionnaire for the Measurement of Social Capital (SC-IQ)-with a focus on applications in developing countries. The tool aims to generate quantitative data on various dimensions of social capital as part of a larger household survey (such as the Living Standards Measurement Survey or a household income/expenditure survey). Specifically, six dimensions are considered: groups and networks; trust and solidarity; collective action and cooperation; information and communication; social cohesion and inclusion; empowerment and political action. The paper addresses sampling and data collection issues for implementing the SC-IQ and provides guidance for the use and analysis of data. The tool has been pilot-tested in Albania and Nigeria and a review of lessons learned is presented.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9e6a38e06572545cb61d900d69ae3848f183c835

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Citations in the corpus

Unfolding Webs: The Dynamics of Regional Rural Development (2008, background): “As such it is possibly the most important factor in social development (Grootaert et al. 2004).”
Toward a theory of transformative entrepreneuring: Poverty reduction and conflict resolution in Rwanda's entrepreneurial coffee sector (2013, background): “This is because it determines the extent to which members of different antagonistic groups feel socially distant (Grootaert et al., 2003), and high levels of outgroup prejudice are negatively”
Social isolation: A conceptual and measurement proposal (2014, neutral): “65 Grootaert et al. (2004).”
Measuring Capacities for Community Resilience (2010, methodology): “Several measurements of social capital use an aggregate measurement derived from survey data (Grootaert et al. 2004; Kawachi et al. 1997; Krishna and Shrader 2002; Putnam 2000).”
Social capital, governance and performance of Ethiopian coffee cooperatives (2012, methodology): “…answered C© 2012 The Authors Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics C© 2012 CIRIEC To construct the factor of internal network we used two dimensions: ‘feelings of cohesion’ and ‘closeness and conflictive networks’, based on the Social Capital survey designed by Grootaert et al. (2004).”
Reliability and Validity of the Personal Social Capital Scale 16 and Personal Social Capital Scale 8: Two Short Instruments for Survey Studies (2013, methodology): “Different from the three generator measures described above, the A-SCAT (Harpham et al. 2002; Putnam 2000) was developed following the modern psychometric approach (Grootaert et al. 2004).”
Measures of Social Isolation (2017, methodology): “Answer category: 1 = Very likely; 2 = Somewhat likely; 3 = Somewhat unlikely; 4 = Not at all likely 44 Grootaert et al. (2004).”
The Ability to go about Without Shame: A Proposal for Internationally Comparable Indicators of Shame and Humiliation (2007, neutral): “Meanwhile, Grootaert et al. (2004) point to some problems that emerged from pilot tests of the SC-IQ in Albania and Nigeria, which related to translation and the use of challenging concepts, the extensive time needed to complete the survey and the need to adapt specific questions to local contexts.”
Understanding knowledge sharing in virtual communities: An integration of social capital and social cognitive theories (2006, methodology): “Identification was assessed with items adapted to reflect an individual's sense of belonging, feeling of togetherness, and positive feeling toward the virtual community, following prior studies [7,35,55].”
Building social capital from sport event participation: An exploration of the social impacts of participatory sport events on the community (2018, background): “As such, linking capital underlines individual’s perceived influence on the authorities and represents a measure of empowerment, personal efficacy, self-value, and community-ownership (Foxton & Jones, 2011; Grootaert et al., 2004; Kay, 2006).”