A Dimensional Approach to Measuring Social Capital: Development and Validation of a Social Capital Inventory

S capital has gained wide acceptability as a fruitful theoretical perspective for understanding and predicting the norms and social relations embedded in the social structures of societies. It is these patterns of social interrelationships that enable people to coordinate action to achieve desired goals (Putnam, 1993). Bourdieu, a French sociologist, was one of the first authors to analyze systematically the properties of social capital, defining it as ‘the sum of resources, actual and virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition’ (Bourdieu, 1980). James Coleman, a sociologist interested in the role of social capital in human capital creation and educational outcomes, defined social capital by its function. ‘It is not a single entity, but a variety of different entities having two characteristics in common: they all consist of some aspect of social structure and they facilitate certain actions of individuals who are within the structure’ (Coleman, 1988). Emphasizing social capital’s function in different contexts, Portes (1998) defines social capital ‘as the ability of actors to secure benefits by virtue of memberships in social networks or other social structures’. These socialization processes, in turn, lead to internalization of a particular set of values and norms that can then be taken advantage of by others.