Measurement of Social Capital - Example

AN ESSAY ON SOCIAL CAPITAL Customer Inserts His/hers Name Customer Inserts Grade Course Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name Introduction Social capital is a web of societal interactions which are exemplified by a custom of trust and the nature of give-and –take. Pooled together, it is these characteristics that are believed to protract civil society and which allow individuals to act in thought of one another. Others would comprehend this as the basis for which persons in society are able to solve adversity they share in common. Social capital can also be said to be that communal deed that may lead to a broad array of results, whether expected or not. For instance, a community may unite, willingly or not, based on their accepted beliefs to progress themselves democratically, economically, socially, or in terms of health or education or any other improvement in their quality of life. For instance, formation a professional body or a discussion group in school. Sobel (2002) writes that a decline in these group activities threaten the quality of societal consensus and the quality of existence. He reiterates that this decline has in-depth damaging consequences not only on the democratic frameworks, but on the effectiveness of learning institutions, communal health programmes as well as the socio-economic well being of societies. Overview of Social Capital Social Capital, has become a modern topic of discussion for many stakeholders in society. It appears on the heading as well as body of many literature at such an enormous rate that it creates cause to decipher what social capital is, analyse what has been said about it as well as make necessary enquiries on what elements about it warrant deeper understanding or review . Among its very many areas of controversy has been its true meaning. But quite frankly, there has been generic consensus in the works of many authors and writers on the the eventual impact of social capital than the understanding of what it is (Putnam, 2002). Putnam concedes that the union of social capital borders on the value addition of the networks themselves and the allied model of reciprocity. The value, however, is only for people who who participate in these networks or at some point in time interacted with the group. However, there could be spill-overs in some very rare cases. He continues to elaborate, that there are different facets of social capital, public and private social capital. This collaborates with the work of Collier’s (1998), who also distinguishes between government social capital and civil social capital. In his definitions; the latter would imply on the common traditions, shared values, generally accepted behaviour, informal associations and the former would insinuate on the rule of law, the degree of civil rights and obligations as well as the validated social contracts. In networks, where the government social capital is non existent, oppressing or constrained in power, the civil social capital becomes predominant. This however does not completely nullify how others have classified social capital as there has been, up to date, a number of broad classifications. But that is not the mandate of this essay. Since it is evident that there are different forms of capital and some are perceived as relevant and beneficial to certain aspects of human living while others are not. It is never clear how these forms should be aggregated to get an amalgamation that is 100 percent effective to the society just like it was that lucid, at first, to identify the conventional or appropriate proportional mix of physical capital to instrument to gain high productivity. Coming to terms that there is no single and distinguished form of social capital, scholars need to always consider the varied scope of social capital and construe the logical theoretical and numerical extent with which the different forms should vary. The forms are inexhaustible and take different hierarchies. For instance, labour unions could be professional based, nationwide or even regionally oriented. They can also be said to be formally organised with a director, secretary and members with a choreographed manner of operations and chain of command. Others are highly casual or informal, like a group of men who convene at their favourite bar every Saturday evening to commemorate on their weekly occurrences. Yet, these two scenarios reveal arrangements made by people in which there is a symbiotic social relationship, each with a probability of gain. Some forms of social capital are opaquely interconnected like a group of fire fighters who meet at their place of employment on a daily basis, belong to the same religion and meet at their place of worship every Sunday and go out to the gymnasium on Saturdays. On the contrary, there are also those that are almost un-noticeable and loosely inter-twinned, such as a group of shareholder who have bought equity of a firm and assemble once a year during the annual general meeting. They should however not be dismissed easily as they too have their probability of gains. There is argument that in some groups there may be need to levy members a predetermined charge to strive to achieve the goals of the group. For instance, for persons living in a particular building or estate and unite inorder to enhance security or have a baby day care in the area.They may therefore agree to contribute each a standard charge to hire the securty services. In other cases, like those of a discussion group at the university, may not neccessitate membership fee. A true example of how members of a network develop positive behaviour and change their perceptions towards the greater good of their goal. In Australia, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2002), the Common Wealth Department of Family and Community services has dedicated an increased resource on public building through it implemntation of its Sronger communities and Family strategy. It implements this by dedicating money for various society- based projects which confront the varoius diputes and adversities in the local envoronment. The road map also prescribes a partnership between the different stakeholders of all levels, from the prevailing government, to societal leaders and their members, entreprenuers as well as the various groups present whether public or private. Measurement of Social Capital Despite it being a relatively old concept and its substantial application in societal problem solving. There is great demand for numerical measurement by many stakeholders yet this has been unsuccessful. This is broadly because of the existence of the different forms of social capital and it is impossible to simply discover generic formulae that will accurately enumerate this concept. Furthermore, its characteristic nature yields the complexity for researchers to empirically value social capital. However, a reminder is made, that getting empirical evidences will create better understanding of the social capital in order for its effective use in growth and development of communities and their networks. In addition, once we are able to give measure, we can know how well endowed socially capital groups look like and create a model for emulation for those with deficient. This was according to Stone (2001). With that in mind, it is vital to commit to memory that there are varied approaches used in the appraisal of social capital particularly within different groups and organisations. These may warrant further examination of specific localities and their qualitative characteristics through amassing of areas at a given time-frame by means of observation, enumeration of the locals and so on. Responses from the various stakeholders has pin-pointed a comprehensive ideologies and line of questions that could not have been known just by a mere review of the social capital data. Although not all measurement approaches may be vividly defined in terms of the underlying process. Most of the present day slants provide us with a convenient history of what was attempted. First, there was the effort to assemble secondary data. This was used by researchers to create a visual expression of the trend that has been existent with regard to their areas of study. However, studies have flouted this approach by crediting it as the source of confoundness that exists in social capital measurement. This is largely attributed to the different outcomes that can be concluded by using the same set of secondary data. Secondly, there was also the group of researchers who opted to collect primary data. They were limited in number, however they added to the complexity and accuracy of the collected information. Putnam (2002) therefore cautions that any measure has a margin of error and none whatsoever would be predictably what we expected. Stone (2001) made use of Survey in measuring social capital. Data is collected from the core of the society, the residents concerning the networks they form. The residents are further asked questions relating to how they perceive their economy, society or geographical region. This is because, this method considers the residents as part of the society and they would have a true and accurate view rather than by measuring social capital directly. This method aims to achieve clear understanding of the distribution of social capital in an area with comprehensive elaboration of the social capital endowment of the individual families. It implies that by using this method of measure, the ‘social scale’ of social capital comes in to focus. According to Putnam’s (2002) view, market share measure is one that can be used in the assessing civic groupings in the long run. Although his intention was, to gather evidence of social grouping in the United States over a given period of time. He adds that this approach can be used in other nations of the world. The method engrosses a proportion of the sum total. For example, what fraction of all American women are Catholic? What fraction of American men play golf? What ratios of parents in a group have taken up insurance cover? Or what proportion of boy students are members of the scout association. Such that, the result was that there was a larger membership during changing periods. During times of economic want, people tend to back down from economic associations until such a point that they can no longer survive on their own. Similarly, political appraisal groups will also be more pronounced in terms of economic adversity. However, he found two shortcomings of his technique of measuring social relationships. First, it was confined to partisanship in fixed association. This would have been a possible result of the fact that he was trying to measure membership to a group across the country. It was therefore detected that informal units of associations were difficult to measure, such as picnic groupings or informal self help groups. The second shortcoming was the controversy that reversed the natural sequence of events. There was belief that associations were a subsequent result of social capital rather than our common acceptance that people first network to boost the social capital levels. Although he argued himself against this, the spark of controversy down played his measurement style. The appraisal of the intensity, reciprocity and norm of trust in the different community groups of different social magnitude might resemble the Likert type Scale, that is commonly used in surveys and graduates elements or indicators on a calibrated range of one to ten; and the technique of estimating the size of the network by simple counting where direct approach is integrated. (Hughes, & Stone, 2002). The technique that is usually a bit more devious is that of diversity approach. This measure also at lower level groupings can also take the structure of the Likert Scale or simple counting. However, the diversity approach of obtaining feedback from the sampled respondents of an informal group setting can be built on formulation of a wide range of questions about the residents and participants of an association. For instance, with regard to the casual networks in higher institutions of learning, individuals were asked about what they knew about the level of education of their significant other, for those who had, and those of their cohorts as well as their own. A measurement is then constructed with a relevant classification of the major and minor levels of the individuals but not with a calibrated of one to ten, simply, that of beyond or less than a specific range. There is also the network density measurement (Paldam, 2000). In the latter approach, the secret of focus is to draw the different links set up by individuals and assign scores or weights to each link. You can then identify the significance of each or the strength of each link. This technique will however be time consuming and eat up on labour resources. At the beginning, it simply involves finding answers to open questions but then the major task comes when you begin to map the interconnections of the networks to resemble electrical connections in an electronic gadget or mapping a dense road network. According to Stone and Hughes (2002), there are three basic classifications of measuring and analysing social capital. The Typology approach, the network based approach and the overall measure approach. The typology approach generically involves on making grouping of scenarios and respondents. It lays its emphasis in trying to identify a natural configuration of scrutiny and respondents within an enumeration process based on contour with multiple variables. The Network-based approach reviews the steadfastness of the critical rudiments of social capital, which are the customs and the inter-connectivity characteristic, within different social territories. This method provides detailed information because of its specific nature of how each link forecasts given upshots. The Overall-based approach, considers the aggregate inventory of social capital available to persons in society. Application to the health Issue in Society Present day substantiation proposes that social approaches to the organisaton and provision of health and medical services, result to considerable prospective for improvement more so for those disadvantaged persons in society. Health Development Agency’s (2004) theoretical study portrays that social capital impact positively the local society in England. While perhaps, this may not be the fast moving sector with regard to exercising effective social capital, the potential use has been looked at a very instrumental tool in improving health and well-being of persons. Communities with low quality milieu, low level housing structures, high levels of insecurity and poverty not forgetting the high levels of liability are characteristics of a society that has poor social capital. With existence of such un-wanted vices, the mental as well as the overall physical health can be derogatory. Therefore with alleviation of these bad characteristics, it simply means that there is a chance for a perk up in the health sector. When people come together, they can help eradicate crime by implementing better security structures or through rotating fund-raising or self help projects improve on their housing structures and drainage systems thereby creating less risk of being admitted to hospitals. This association and many more, will heighten better health. Whiteford &Cullen (2001) also talk of social capital can help heighten human capital though improving health of individuals in the process. They talk of a scenario, where individuals suffering with mental ailments can receive psychological therapy through group focused or oriented socialization. This can help the patient to overcome their signs of mental inaptitude and progress of the individuals’ capability to engage in beneficial social interaction. There is also the formal and informal arrangements where patients belonging to a given group such as a Medical Insurance package. When individuals want to go for preventive medication or worse case scenario, if it was a critical treatment that warrants huge payment of bills, they can have their assemblies pay for them as per their membership charges. They can also visit each other to encourage them. This has been proved to be an effective booster for maintaining good health. Members of a group can also offer each other valuable information in the process of interaction that improves the health of their members. Conclusion The determination of social capital levels provide in depth knowledge into social functioning and how such assemblies in the community can be taken advantage of each other to contribute to constructive benefits on the different facets of the community. In this sense, this determination enlarges our comprehension of how individuals in an environment can co-operate and work to culminate shared ambitions and to forestall or completely eliminate all the hindrances to their objective. Adler (2002), says that it’s is important for unity to prevail in any social network. If this happens, then the value derived from the interaction can be quite vast. This is despite the reality that these connections can be birthed from seemingly weak ties that link otherwise un-related groups. Such causes for birth may be community’s security or eradication of crime, professional training and employment, sporting and leisure activities, sourcing for transport, cultural beliefs and practices, search for better drainage and housing structures in urban and rural settlements, valuations and perceptions of various forms of art, health and medical service provision or even better education. References Adler, P.S. (2002). Social Capital: Prospects for a new Concept. Academy of Management Review, 27(1), 17-40. Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2002). Social Capital and Social Well being. Canberra: Australian Bureau of statistics. Collier, R. (1998). Social Capital and Poverty: Social Capital Initiative. Washington D.C: World Bank. Frankie, S (2005). Measurement of Social Capital: Reference Document for Public Policy Research Development and Evaluation. Florida: Policy Research Initiative. Paldam, M. (2000). Social Capital: One or Many Definitions and Measurement. Journal of Economic Surveys, 14(5), 629-653. Putnum, R. (2001). Social Capital: Measurement and Consequences. Harvard: University of Harvard. Sobel, J (2002). Can we Trust Social Capital: Journal of Economic Literature, XL (1), 139- 154. Stone, W. (2001). Measuring Social Capital: Towards a Theoretical Informed Measurement Framework for Researching Social Capital In Family and Community Life. Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies. Stone, W., & Hughes, J. (2002). Social Capital and Empirical Meaning and Measuring Validity. Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies. Whiteford, H., & Cullen, M. (2001). The Inter-Relation of Social Capital with Health and Mental Health: National Mental Health strategy. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia Read More