Đo lường vốn xã hội cá nhân: Luận án Tiến sĩ của Martin van der Gaag tại Đại học Groningen

University of Groningen Measurement of individual social capital Gaag, Martin Pieter Johannes van der IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2005 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Gaag, M. Measurement of individual social capital.

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Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 23-08-2022 Measurement of individual social capital Martin van der Gaag This research was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), project number 510-50-204. Design and photography: Judith Besselink & Evert Albers Printed by F&N Boekservices, Amsterdam c 2005 Martin van der Gaag Rijksuniversiteit Groningen ISBN 90 7383 842 8 Measurement of individual social capital Proefschrift ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de Psychologische, Pedagogische en Sociologische Wetenschappen aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, dr.

Zwarts in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 19 mei 2005 om 13:15 uur door Martin Pieter Johannes van der Gaag geboren op 12 oktober 1969 te Vlaardingen Promotores: Prof. Flap Members of the reading committee: Prof. Wittek (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) Inspired by the lectures of Ad Nooij ii Contents 1 Social capital 1 1.2 The notion of social capital .5 Topics and problems .2 The problem of measurement .3 Choices in approach .1 Individual or collective level .2 Positive and ‘negative’ social resources .3 Theoretical frameworks of social capital .4 Access or use measures. 20 2 Relationships and embedded resources 23 2.2 The social network .4 Ties as capital: formation, investment and maintenance .3 Opportunity and proximity .3 Using social capital.

40 3 Counting social capital 43 3.1 Notions for counting. 43 iii iv CONTENTS 3.1 Additions over alters .2 Counting within domains .3 Distinction of resource domains .1 Distinction by individual goals .2 Distinction by forms of capital .3 Distinction by effects of social capital .4 Outline of the empirical part of the study. 60 4 Data and methods 63 4.1 Data and collection .2 Approach of respondents and interview procedure .3 Sample composition and measures .2 Scale construction with IRT models .3 Cumulative scaling analysis .4 Unfolding scale analysis .5 Practical considerations with IRT analyses .6 Correlations between scale values .1 Network delineation and instruments .4 The SSND Name Generators .1 Characteristics of network relationships .2 Assumption of increasing tie strength .4 Comparison of measures .2 Distributions over subgroups. 96 6 The Position Generator 103 6.1 Construction of the instrument .2 The SSND Position Generator .3 Initial distribution of responses .2 Construction of measures .2 Inductive cluster analysis .3 Inductive unfolding scale analysis .4 Inductive cumulative scale analysis .3 Comparison of measures .3 Distributions over subgroups .1 Distribution of Position Generator items .2 Latent traits in Position Generator data.

133 7 The Resource Generator 137 7.1 Construction of the instrument .2 The SSND Resource Generator .3 Initial distribution of responses .2 Construction of measures .2 Inductive cluster analysis .3 Inductive unfolding scale analysis .4 Inductive cumulative scale analysis .3 Comparison of measures .3 Distributions over subgroups .4 Correlations between personal and social resources .1 The Resource Generator instrument .2 Latent traits in Resource Generator data. 163 8 Name Generators as resource items 167 8.1 Initial distribution of responses .3 Construction of measures .2 Inductive cluster analysis .3 Inductive unfolding scale analysis .4 Inductive cumulative scale analysis .4 Comparison of measures .3 Distributions over subgroups. 175 9 Comparison of methods 181 9.2 Comparison of measures method by method .1 Name Generator and Position Generator measures .2 Name Generator and Resource Generator measures .3 Position Generator and Resource Generator measures .3 Cross-method comparison of measures .1 Distributions of measures .2 Between-model comparisons .2 The ‘Big Five’ of social capital .4 Specific merits of measurement methods .5 Proposal for a social capital measurement strategy. 203 Appendix 207 References 225 Samenvatting 239 Acknowledgements 246 ICS dissertation series 249 1 2 CONTENTS Chapter 1 Social capital 1.1 Inequality From daily experience we can learn there are large differences between individual achieve- ments in life.

Although in most societies cultural traditions, laws and religions demand equal treatment of its members, some of them enjoy better health, more wealth, or find better opportunities for goal attainment than others. More concretely, some people are able to achieve higher levels of education, find better jobs, higher incomes, better suitable homes, and many of the other rewards life has to offer. Differential ‘success’ in life can also be observed in more private domains: some people make friends more easily, find a suitable partner more successfully, or are simply happier than others. Explaining the causes of these long-established forms of inequality, and the circumstances under which these emerge has become one of the traditional questions of sociology (see e.

Ultee, Arts, and Flap, 1996). Inequality research has taken a number of perspectives to explain such differences in individual achievements. One of these considers psychological conditions; for example, people differ in ambition: not everyone is prepared to put the same efforts into the pursuit of a career, the ideal partner, or the best housing. The outcomes of such actions may therefore show considerable variation.

Variation in individual achievements can also be studied from a socioeconomic perspective. For a successful completion of actions, resources have to be accessed and applied. The general idea is therefore that individuals who can access more resources or capital will succeed better in life. Early conceptions of capital – collections of personally owned resources – considered mainly material and financial resources (Quesney, 1766, and Turgot, 1770, in Hennings, 1987); eventually, Marx (1867) incorporated such a financial operationalisation of ‘capital’ into an inequality paradigm.

Weber (1921) specified the concept in terms of [economic] capital along the idea that assets in general, and money more specifically, facilitate pro- duction and goal attainment and can therefore buy us opportunities. In addition, Weber distinguished political capital, defined as “authority being a means of production”: the ability to assert power also offers opportunities. In the early 1960s personal skills and knowledge began to be considered as pools of resources that can differentiate individual outcomes, and were headed under the notion of human capital (Becker, 1964; Johnson, 2 CHAPTER 1. SOCIAL CAPITAL 1970; Schultz, 1961): one’s value on the labour market depends on one’s individual pro- ductivity, which can be improved by education.

This conceptualisation enabled a better explanation of why people with better education, knowledge, and more experience find better jobs. In addition, Bourdieu (1973, 1984) introduced the notion of cultural capi- tal, referring to the collection of cultural knowledge that can work to the advantage of individuals, provided it is made productive in the right environment. In addition to the control one has over personal resources, one’s social background has also been considered an important determinant of success in life: genetic factors and resources of parents in their various forms all shape individual outcomes. To which extent socioeconomic statuses are carried over between generations has become the central topic to stratification research, initiated in its modern form at the end of the 1960s by Blau and Duncan (1967).

Influence on the accomplishment of individual actions is not only provided by the family of origin alone, however. Theoretically, all other people with whom one is acquainted can influence the outcomes of individual actions: other kin, friends, acquain- tances, neighbours, and colleagues together form a context in which individuals pursue their goals. Sometimes this context may work as a constraint, and block opportunities. More often it also helps in pursuing goals that can be achieved less well, or not at all on our own: people regularly exchange help of widely varying content.

Sometimes, the help is merely practical, like borrowing a ladder or a cup of sugar from the neighbours. However, more complex and more involving assistance is also exchanged, like help with filling out tax declarations, or passing on information about job opportunities. Most of the emotional goals in life can even be achieved exclusively with the help of others, such as keeping each other company, having a good time together, sexuality and procreation, but also discussing personal problems or comforting each other during a crisis. The gen- eral idea that relationships with other people can be seen as openings to collections of available resources, in addition to or as a substitute for personal resources, is what is at the basis of this dissertation.

Basically, that is what is understood as social capital in this study.2 The notion of social capital The notion of social capital developed over a long period of time, through contributions by a number of theorists. The basic idea that others and their resources make significant contributions to personal achievements in our lives is not new, but its current understand- ing has come a long way. The term social capital was already mentioned incidentally in the 19th century (Lin, personal communication); other authors (Borgatti, 1998; Paxton, 1999) have traced back the term to the works of Hanifan (1920) and Jacobs (1961). Eventually, scholars came to agree that ‘second order resources’ (Boisse- vain, 1974), the resources of the persons we know, can also be seen as ‘capital’, and that it is useful to distinguish them from personal (financial, human, cultural, political) capital (Bourdieu, 1980; Coleman, 1990; Loury, 1987) since they are complementary in individual goal attainment.1 1 Some authors have proposed to use the term ‘social capital’ as referring to one single, accumulated potential of social resources, whereas the term ‘social resources’ should be reserved for mobilised resources.

INTRODUCTION 3 Parallel to these theoretical developments, in the 1970s social networks research gradually established itself as a separate field within sociology, studying patterns of relationships be- tween people and their implications. Mostly, such patterns were considered as constraints on individual behaviour. At the same time, another branch of social network research focused specifically on the emergence of social networks. These two perspectives remained unrelated for a long time, and separate explanations were worked out within either (Flap, 2002, 2004).

Since the 1980s, a large body of research was also devoted to the concept of social support. Within this field, transactions between individuals were studied mainly as the outcomes of social networks, in the form of actual help received by individuals. Often however, it was also taken for granted that the mere presence of alters makes individual goal attainment more easy (Flap, 1991). Earlier, a general understanding of (financial, political, human, cultural) resources as capital had successfully been incorporated into social research.

A capital is generally understood as “a stock (at a point of time) of different capital goods”, where capital goods are “produced commodities which are required for production no matter how much or how little they are subject to wear and tear” (Hennings, 1987:327). Eventually, this idea was also transferred to the study of social relationships and social networks. Through contributions from several authors, gradually a perspective on social resources became accepted in which it was considered social capital.