Dimensions
of social capital
Social capital,
like intelligence, generally coheres as a core concept. Some
people are smarter than others, and people adept at math are
likely to be good at poetry; which is why one can speak of IQs
(Intelligence Quotients). However, at a finer grain, there
are different types of intelligence—the best mathematicians
are not the best poets, and neither are they necessarily emotionally
intelligent.
The same
is true of social capital. Among literally hundreds of different
measures of social capital in the Social Capital Community Benchmark
Survey, some people (or communities) broadly are more (or less)
socially connected. People with lots of friends are more likely
to vote more, to attend church more often, and to bowl in leagues.
This means that you can speak of a person (or a community) as
being generally high (or low) in social capital. On the other
hand, closer examination reveals different sub-dimensions (comparable
to the difference between mathematical, verbal, emotional, and
spatial intelligence).
What follows
is a brief description of the 11 different facets of social
capital that have emerged from the Social Capital Community
Benchmark Survey. There are two dimensions of "social
trust" (whether you trust others), two measures of
political participation, two measures of civic leadership
and associational involvement, a measure of giving and
volunteering, a measure of faith-based engagement,
a measure of informal social ties, a measure of the diversity
of our friendships, and a measure of the equality of
civic engagement at a community level.
Trust
Social
trust:
at the core of social capital is the question of whether you
can trust other people. Often this trust is forged with specific
people through common participation in groups, associations,
and activities. Nevertheless, when this trust transcends from
trust of specific individuals to generalized trust, it
is extraordinarily valuable. Much like cash is more efficient
than barter (because it eliminates the need to negotiate each
transaction), generalized social trust is extremely important
in lubricating social interaction and getting things accomplished.
Our first index of social trust combines trust of people in
one's neighborhood, coworkers, shop
clerks, co-religionists, local police, and finally "most
people."
Inter-racial
trust:
as we've discussed earlier, a critical challenge facing communities
attempting to build social capital is the fact that it is simply
harder to do in places that are more diverse. The measure of
inter-racial trust looks at the extent to which different racial
groups (whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians) trust one another
and is thus one proxy for the health of inter-racial relations
in a community.
Diversity
of friendships:
equally important to their levels of social
trust are how diverse people's social networks are. Since it
was impractical in a 25 minute phone survey to ask each person
surveyed to list all the people he/she knew and to describe
each one, we asked (as a proxy) whether the respondent had a
personal friend who is a: business owner, was on welfare, owned
a vacation home, is gay, is a manual worker, is White, is Black,
is Hispanic, is Asian, is a community leader, and was of a different
faith. Then we added up how many of these 11 categories each
respondent mentioned. This index thus broadly measures the
degree to which people's social networks (and collectively a
community's networks) are diverse. These "bridging ties"
are especially valuable in producing community solidarity and
in forging a larger consensus on how communities need to change
or work together.
Political
participation
Conventional
politics participation:
One of the key measures for how engaged we are in communities
is the extent to which we are involved politically. This measure
looks at how many in our communities are registered to vote,
actually vote, express interest in politics, are knowledgeable
about political affairs and read the newspaper regularly.
Protest
politics participation:
The data in the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey indicate
that many communities that exhibit low levels of participation
in conventional/electoral ways, nonetheless exhibit high levels
of participation in protest forms, such as taking part in marches,
demonstrations, boycotts, rallies, participating in groups that
took action for local reform, participating in labor and ethnically-related
groups. This dimension is a composite of those types of participation.
Civic
leadership and associational involvement:
Many people typically get involved locally by joining groups
that they care about (be they veterans groups, sports groups,
literary groups, or new age poetry clubs). We measured such
engagement in two ways:
Civic
Leadership: this is a composite measure both of how frequently
respondents were engaged in groups, clubs and local discussions
of town or school affairs, and also whether the respondent took
a leadership role within these groups. Communities that rank
high on this aspect of social capital benefit from a hum of
civic activity.
Associational
involvement:
we measured associational involvement across 18 broad categories
of groups (including an "other" category). Respondents
were asked about participation in the following types of groups:
organizations affiliated with religion;
sports clubs, leagues, or outdoor activities; youth organizations;
parent associations or other school support groups; veterans
groups; neighborhood associations; seniors groups; charity or
social welfare organizations; labor unions; professional, trade,
farm or business associations; service or fraternal organizations;
ethnic, nationality, or civil rights organizations; political
groups; literary, art, or musical groups; hobby, investment,
or garden clubs; self-help programs; groups that meet only over
the Internet; and any other type of groups or associations.
Informal
socializing:
While many communities (or individuals) are either higher or
lower generally in social capital, some communities or individuals
are more likely to develop social connections through formal
memberships and associations ("machers") and others
are more likely to develop these connections through informal
friendships ("schmoozers"). While the "civic
leadership" and "assocational involvement" measures
above capture the formal social ties, the "informal socializing"
dimension measures the degree to which residents had friends
over to their home, hung out with friends in a public place,
socialized with co-workers outside of work, played cards or
board games with others, and visited with relatives.
Giving
and volunteering:
One of the ways that Americans express their concern for others
is through giving to charity or volunteering. Various aspects
of generosity go together: people who are generous with their
purse are also generous with their time. The same is true of
communities. This dimension measures how often community residents
volunteer at various venues and how generous they are in giving.
Faith-based
engagement: religion in
America is a big part of social capital. Roughly one-half of
all American connectedness is religious or religiously affiliated,
whether measured by memberships, volunteering time, or philanthropy.
Thus, this dimension matters a lot to overall levels of community
connection. This measure of faith-based engagement looks at:
religious attendance and membership, participation in church
activities besides services, participation in organization affiliated
with religion, giving to religious causes and volunteering at
place of worship.
Equality
of civic engagement across the community:
in some communities the ranks of the civic are much more heavily
skewed towards those who are wealthier, more educated, and whiter.
In other communities, the poor, less educated, and people of
color participate at rates much closer to their wealthier, whiter
and more educated brethren. Since it is important to the community
health, this measure scores highly those communities with more
egalitarian civic participation. [This measure is an average
correlation across 8 different types of civic participation
and across three measures of class (race, income, and education)
to see how skewed civic participation in a community is.
