Measuring Social Capital

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Measuring Social Capital

• Michael Woolcock
• Development Research Group
• World Bank
• Workshop on Understanding and Building Social
  Capital in Croatia
• 7 March 2002

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Overview

• Why measure?
• What measures cannot do
• Types of measurement
• Goals of social capital measurement
• The evolution of social capital measures
• Early work on networks and participation
• Putnam on community involvement
• Other OECD country research
• World Bank research
• New survey and core module
• Conclusion

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1. Why measure?

• From subjective opinion to objective evidence
• Reconciling conflicting empirical claims
• Testing the accuracy and relevance of theory
• Discerning size and nature of project impact
• Making hard choices among alternatives
• Tracking resource flows
• Creating political space for practitioners
• Human Development Index
• Governance, Human Rights indicators
• 1 per day poverty line

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2. The limits of measurement

• Questions should drive choice of methods and
  measurement tools (not vice versa)
• Social data is always partial, a reflection of a
  more complex underlying reality
• Triangulationintegrating more abundant, more
  diverse, and higher-quality evidence
• Data can be manipulated for political purposes
• Some (very important) things cannot be
  measuredlove, God, identity, meaning
• Not everything that can be counted, counts

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3. Types of measures

• Quantitative
• Household surveys (e.g., census)
• Opinion polls (e.g., Gallup, marketing research)
• Data from official records (e.g., membership
  lists)
• Indexes created from multiple sources (e.g.,
  trust)
• Qualitative
• Historical, political, legal documents
• Media reports
• Interviews (individuals, focus groups)
• Observation
• Social capital measurement calls on all forms

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4. Goals of social capital measurement

• Comparability across time and space
• Sensible aggregation
• Across different scales and units of analysis
• (No common metric, like prices)
• Sensible integration of different methods
• Enhanced Validity
• Selected measures approximate reality
• (Identification errors)
• Enhanced Reliability
• Same procedures, different team, same results

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5. The evolution of socialcapital measures

• Early work on networks and participation
• Research on inner cities in US, UK
• Putnam on community involvement
• Italy and America
• Other OECD country research
• Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, Finland
• World Bank research
• Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Indonesia, India,
  Argentina, Burkina Faso, Bolivia, Romania
• New household survey and core module

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New World Bank Social Capital Survey Instruments

• Draw on experience of earlier studies
• Will be piloted in coming months
• Integrated Measurement Survey (Large)
• Six component modules
• (i) Networks, (ii) Trust, (iii) Cooperation, (iv)
  Information, (v) Inclusion, (vi) Empowerment
• Core Module (Small)
• 27 Questions taken from large survey
• Constructed by expert panel (internal/external
  WB)
• For inclusion and adaptation in social capital
  surveys around the world

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6. Conclusion

• The virtues and limits of measurement
• Tension Simplifying versus complicating reality
• Triangulation
• Integrating more data, better data, diverse data
• Surveys as tool for adaptation and guidance
• Not prescription for uniformity or control
• One size does not fit all
• Encouraging comparability across time and space
• Toward getting the social relations right
• Social dimensions of development too long ignored
• Better data builds better theories, better
  policies