Resource Details
| Resource Name: | Measuring Social Capital: Towards a Theoretically Informed Measurement Framework for Researching Social Capital in Family and Community Life |
| File: | click to download: Measuring_Social_Capital.pdf |
| Resource Type: | Article |
| Short Desc: | By Wendy Stone. Abstract: In Australia, as in other nations, ‘social capital’ is being looked to as a means of stemming the tide of perceived community decline and widespread distrust associated with it. The increasingly central role that social capital plays in Australian public policy has fuelled demand for empirical understandings of it. Yet, demand for empirical measures of social capital exceeds supply. Within this context the Australian Institute of Family Studies is undertaking the Families, Social Capital and Citizenship project. To inform the Institute project, this paper contributes to the development of clear links between theorised and empirical understandings of social capital by: establishing a theoretically informed measurement framework for empirical investigation of social capital, and; reviewing existing measures of social capital in light of this framework. The paper concludes with a statement of guiding principles for the measurement and empirical investigation of social capital in family and community life. Where social capital has been measured to date, it has often been done so using ‘questionable measures’, often designed for other purposes, and without sufficient regard to the theoretical underpinnings of the concept to ensure validity or reliability. This paper will be useful for critiquing and building on the work that has already been done. |
| Resource Date: | 01-Feb-01 |
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| Related Topics: |
Track 1: Sustain. in Community Health Track 3: Complex Systems Civil Society Community Capacity Complexity Evaluation/assessment Global Development Human Development Social Network |