Civic Engagement and Social Cohesion Measuring Dimensions of Social Capital to Inform Policy (2014) / Chapter Skim
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2 What Should Be Measured?
2 What Should Be Measured?
Pages 33-56
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From page 33... ...
To support analytic work that advances understanding of these linkages, high-quality data are necessary. CONCLUSION 1: Data on people's civic engagement, their con nections and networks, and their communities -- aggregated at various levels of demographic and geographic granularity -- are essential for research on the relationships between a range of social capital dimensions and social, health, and economic out comes, and for understanding the directions of those effects.
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From page 34... ...
However, there is little agreement on the definitions of these constructs, which is a major roadblock to quantifying them. CONCLUSION 2: Because the terms "social capital," "civic engagement," and "social cohesion" refer to broad and mallea bly defined concepts that take on different meanings depending on the context, they are not amenable to direct statistical mea surement.
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From page 35... ...
. Civic engagement may arise in response to problems -- a local crime wave, deteriorating schools, ineffective trash collection, or oppressive leadership -- whose very existence can be the result of failures of citizens to collaborate on effective solutions, police themselves, or hold public leaders accountable.
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From page 36... ...
X Frequency of feelings of loneliness X Participation in online chat groups X Inter-group bridging (e.g., cross-group X socialization, school integration, etc.) Intra-group bonding X Presence of support networks X X Trust In neighbors X X Frequency of exchanging favors X In workplace X Attitudes toward groups other than own X X In government X X In law enforcement X X Informed Citizenry Frequency of reading newspaper X X TV, Internet news X X
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From page 37... ...
WHAT SHOULD BE MEASURED? 37 Promising Data Nature of Phenomena/Data Reporting Collection Modes Behavior Feelings Social (objective, (subjective, Environment observable)
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From page 38... ...
X Profiling practices X Discrimination X Segregation (school, neighborhoods, etc.) X Access to education X Political Polarization Percentage of votes along party lines X Number of "no compromise" issues Attitudes toward people not in own party X X Social Integration Social mobility X X Crime rates X Divorce rates X Income inequality X (though they have strong community-level missions -- for example, the Summer of Service and Youth Engagement Zones)
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From page 39... ...
nonobservable) Characteristics Survey Nonsurvey X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X Civic engagement, as noted above, customarily involves taking action, while social cohesion is more about the conditions that may initiate and facilitate actions or are consequences of them.
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From page 40... ...
Political tolerance and willingness to compromise are other characteristics that affect the social cohesion of groups and populations. Social Capital Social capital is a term that has been used to portray many of the elements of civic engagement and social cohesion described above as well as others having to do with the connectedness of people to others.
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From page 41... ...
. Putnam considered bridging social capital more essential for the kind of social cohesion that allows minority ethnic groups to integrate beyond their immediate community and into wider society.
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From page 42... ...
27) described social capital as "shared norms or values that promote social cooperation, instantiated in actual social relationships." He emphasized the role of certain subjective states and attitudes, such as trust, which: ".
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From page 43... ...
; another may take advantage of weaker ties to find out about job opportunities through what amounts to an informal employment referral system. Proliferation of Internet and email use and, more recently, social media has enabled individuals to maintain increasingly large numbers 4 For meta-analyses of the links between social relationships and mortality risk, see Berkman and Syme (1979)
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From page 44... ...
It is a research question whether and to what extent the use of new technologies has begun to repair (or added to degradation of) some of the perceived deterioration of connectedness and civic engagement that has taken place over the past few decades.
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From page 45... ...
What is clear is that multidimensional, multimode data collection efforts facilitate far greater analytic flexibility for researchers than can a single indicator or even information 5 The survey embodies a detailed conceptualization of social capital that includes more than 100 items, administered to both a national sample and to representative samples in 41 communities across the United States. The items cover 11 dimensions in the domains of trust, informal networks, formal networks, political involvement, and equality of civic engagement across the community (constructed measure across race, income, and education levels)
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From page 46... ...
This two-component classification -- while not without its limitations6 -- reflects the traditional division in social theory between quantitative and qualitative dimensions, described by Simmel (1971) , and could reasonably be extended to organize the content of civic engagement: • objective indicators: for example, political engagement (voting, discussing politics, contacting politicians, participating in cam 6 In each category, one can marshal counterarguments: to what extent can social isolation really be measured objectively?
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From page 47... ...
) ; attitudes toward having people from "non like" groups as neighbors, family members, or church members The above distinctions are suggestive of how the broad concepts (social capital, civic engagement, and social cohesion)
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From page 48... ...
. The broad categories in Table 2-1 -- political engagement, social cohesion, and trust -- are not directly measureable, but they serve to group specific elements -- voting, frequency of contact with people, attitudes toward neighbors -- that often are.
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From page 49... ...
Examples include the concentration or density of proximate individuals who have social capital and use it to assist others, and the institutions such as schools, churches, clubs, and local markets that facilitate making connections. The presence of individuals possessing social capital and access to facilitating institutions create a positive feedback loop that can reinforce and grow social capital in a community.
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From page 50... ...
And some group phenomena that interact with dimensions of social capital -- for example, inequality -- clearly take place at aggregations above the family or the community. Concerns about the top one percent or, at the other end of the ideological spectrum, about overemphasizing class conflict pertain to a loss of social cohesion that is not a local phenomenon.
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From page 51... ...
These "nature of phenomena" distinctions do not by themselves establish a clear demarcation of what to cover and what not to cover, but they are important considerations in developing a data collection strategy. Clearly defined activities or behaviors such as voting or volunteering can often be reported in a comparatively straightforward way with a few questions on a population survey.10 Data on other observable actions, such as interacting using social media or donating money to charity, which can be asked about on surveys, may be obtainable using nonsurvey 10 This distinction can be overdrawn.
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From page 52... ...
For example, neighborhood crime, discrimination, social mobility, or changing family structures could all factor into levels of reported trust, and trust or lack thereof may in turn have an impact on these conditions. The last three categories in the table -- fairness, political polarization, and social integration -- are examples of characteristics of the social environment that relate to social capital but that are major topics in their own right, each with deep research literatures.
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From page 53... ...
Economic and social mobility and the other social environment variables listed in Table 2-1 are important (and related) measurement topics; for some analyses, they are key covariates and possibly a reflection of civic engagement and social cohesion.
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From page 54... ...
. The research cited above, and many other studies, examined how inequality interacts with civic engagement, social cohesion, and other dimensions of social capital: this work is suggestive of the kinds of data needed to advance understanding of these relationships.
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From page 55... ...
. political scientist Daniel Aldrich found that communities with robust social networks coped better in Kobe, Japan, after the earthquake in 1995 and in Tamil Nadu, India, following the catastrophic Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.
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