The Measurement of Social Capital in America: A Reassessment

Abstract

One of the more successful approaches to the measurement of social capital across US counties relies on a two-step algorithm procedure. In the first step, ten variables accounting for the per capita number of various types of voluntary organizations are averaged to generate an Aggregate Index. In the second step, the Aggregate Index and three other factors are used to extract an overall Social Capital Index. Here, we propose several methodological improvements to this already solid methodology. We replace the Aggregate Index calculated as a simple average with a measure generated with principal component analysis, and subsequently with a formative partial least squares dimension-reduction procedure. We explore variations of these procedures, according to the rent-seeking nature of the organizations that make up our groupings. We illustrate our methodology by using US county data. We find that, even when holding the normative concept and the data constant we generate alternative metrics with different characteristics. This result has far-reaching implications for both the theory of social capital and the public policies that rely on the evidence surrounding social capital. There appears to be an inherent arbitrariness to measuring complex social phenomena using a reductionist analytical framework. At the same time, there are limits to evidence-based policy interventions. These limits need to be mitigated with a balanced approach relying on both analytical tools and qualitative evaluations.

Examining Characteristics of Local Public Health Systems With Exceptional Tribal Organization Participation

“…It describes overall participation of residents in important civic activities such as volunteering, voting, and being members of formalized social groups. While social capital can be a challenging concept to pin down and measure, it can capture the impactful phenomenon of how individual investment in relationships contributes to communal social good, such as trust in public institutions or collective action 28. Higher levels of social capital have been found to be predictive of higher levels of specific types of public health partnerships 29…”

“…While social capital can be a challenging concept to pin down and measure, it can capture the impactful phenomenon of how individual investment in relationships contributes to communal social good, such as trust in public institutions or collective action. 28 Higher levels of social capital have been found to be predictive of higher levels of specific types of public health partnerships. 29 All other network measures were calculated from data in 2018 NALSYS to describe local public health systems.…”

How Does Regional Social Capital Structure the Relationship Between Entrepreneurship, Ethnic Diversity, and Residential Segregation?

“…We operationalize this variable with the county-level measure of regional social capital developed by Rupasingha et al (2006, with updates), also known as the Penn State Data. While not perfect, this measure is one of the most promising extant indicators of regional social capital, captures elements of both bridging and bonding social capital (Vâlsan et al, 2023) and is widely used across a variety of disciplines (e.g., Hasan et al, 2017; Holtkamp & Weaver, 2018; Hwang & Lee, 2023; Jensen & Ramey, 2020), including entrepreneurship (e.g., Conroy & Deller, 2020; Cordero, 2023; Vedula & Kim, 2019). 3 The Penn State measure is based on the density (per 1,000 inhabitants) of “horizontally ordered groups (like sports clubs, co-operatives, mutual aid societies, cultural associations, and voluntary unions)” (Putnam et al, 1993: 175) in a county in a year.…”

Social Capital, Financial Capital, and Entrepreneurial Orientation: Keys to Performance in Indonesia’s MSME Clothing Industry

“…While additional dimensions of social capital have been proposed in scholarly discourse, such as social participation, social support, reciprocity, formal membership, altruism, and informal interaction (Liu et al, 2023) (Vâlsan et al, 2023) (Alecu et al, 2022), these are often intertwined with the three principal dimensions mentioned above. It is imperative to acknowledge that social capital is a complex and interrelated concept, and its assessment should not treat these dimensions as isolated entities.…”