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Measuring
Social Capital
in Five Communities in NSW
The full
report Measuring Social
Capital in Five Communities in NSW A
Practitioner's Guide (101pp)
FULL REPORT Practitioners Guide
Overview
of a Study
Paul
Bullen & Jenny Onyx
with Neighbourhood and Community Centres March 1998
Contents
The paper
provides a brief overview of the study "Measuring Social Capital
in Five Communities in NSW". The full findings from the
study are published in two reports. See section 6. More Information
for details.
A useful site for
social capital resources and background information is the
World Bank Social Capital Site. It includes numerours articles and
a discussion group.
Copyright
Paul Bullen and Jenny Onyx
(New
South Wales (NSW) is a State of Australia)
Social capital is the
raw material of Civil society. It is created from the myriad of everyday
interactions between people. It is not located within the individual person
or within the social structure, but in the space between people. It is not
the property of the organisation, the market or the state, though all can
engage in its production.
Social capital is
a "bottom-up" phenomenon. It originates with people forming social
connections and networks based on principles of trust, mutual reciprocity
and norms
of action.
The term social capital
was first used in the 1980s by Bourdieu and Coleman.
Robert
Putman
Wide discussion of
social capital was prompted after the publication in 1993 of Making
Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy by Robert Putman.
Putnam summarises some of his work:
Similar to the
notions of physical and human capital, the term social capital refers
to features of social organization -- such as networks, norms, and trust
that increase a society's productive potential....
Beginning in 1970,
Italians established a nationwide set of potentially powerful regional
governments. They were virtually identical in form, but the social, economic,
political, and cultural contexts in which they were implanted differed
dramatically ranging from the pre-industrial to the post-industrial and
from the inertly feudal to the frenetically modern.
Some of the new
governments proved to be dismal failures inefficient and corrupt. Others
have been remarkably successful....
Contrary to our
expectation, we were unable to explain the differences on the basis of
such obvious factors as party politics, affluence, or population movements....
The historical
record strongly suggests that the successful communities became rich because
they were civic, not the other way round. The social capital embodied
in norms and networks of civic engagement seems to be a precondition for
economic development as well as for effective government. Civics matters.
(PCD Forum March 6, 1995)
Eva
Cox
In Australia Eva Cox
generated considerable discussion of social capital through the 1995 Boyer
Lectures. She said:
There are four
major capital measures, one of which takes up far too much policy time
and space at present. This is Financial capital. Physical
capital makes it onto the agenda because of the environmental
movement. So there are fierce debates on trees, water, coal and what constitutes
sustainable development. Some types of physical capital and financial
capital deplete with overuse, or become scarce or too expensive. We occasionally
mention human capital - the total of our skills and knowledge
but rarely count its loss in unemployment.
There has been
too little attention paid to social capital... Social
capital refers to the processes between people which establish networks,
norms, social trust and facilitate co-ordination and co-operation for
mutual benefit. These processes are also known as social fabric or glue,
but 1 am deliberately using the term 'capital' because it invests the
concept with the reflected status from other forms of capital. Social
capital is also appropriate because it can be measured and quantified
so we can distribute its benefits and avoid its losses.
We increase social
capital by working together voluntarily in egalitarian organisations.
Learning some of the rough and tumble of group processes also has the
advantages of connecting us with others. We gossip, relate and create
the warmth that comes from trusting. Accumulated social trust allows groups
and organisations, and even nations, to develop the tolerance sometimes
needed to deal with conflicts and differing interests....
Social capital
should be the pre-eminent and most valued form of any capital as it provides
the basis on which we build a truly civil society. Without our social
bases we cannot be fully human. Social capital is as vital as language
for human society.
Themes
in the Literature
In the growing literature
on social capital, a number of themes are emerging:
1. Participation
in networks.
Key to all uses of
the concept is the notion of more or less dense interlocking networks
of relationships between individuals and groups. People engage with others
through a variety of lateral associations. These associations must be
both voluntary and equal.
Social capital cannot
be generated by individuals acting on their own. It depends on a propensity
for sociability, a capacity to form new associations and networks.
2. Reciprocity.
Social capital does
not imply the immediate and formally accounted exchange of the legal or
business contract, but a combination of short term altruism and long term
self interest (Taylor, 1982). The individual provides a service to others,
or acts for the benefit of others at a personal cost, but in the general
expectation that this kindness will be returned at some undefined time
in the future in case of need. In a community where reciprocity is strong,
people care for each other's interests.
3. Trust.
Trust entails a willingness
to take risks in a social context based on a sense of confidence that
others will respond as expected and will act in mutually supportive ways,
or at least that others do not intend harm.
4. Social Norms.
Social norms provide
a form of informal social control that obviate the necessity for more
formal, institutionalised legal sanctions. Social norms are generally
unwritten but commonly understood formulae for both determining what patterns
of behaviour are expected in a given social context, and for defining
what forms of behaviour are valued or socially approved.
Some people argue
that where social capital is high, there is little crime, and little need
for formal policing.
Where there is a low
level of trust and few social norms, people will cooperate in joint action
only under a system of formal rules and regulations. These have to be
negotiated, agreed to, litigated and enforced, sometimes by coercive means,
leading to expensive legal transaction costs (Fukyama, 1995).
5. The Commons
The combined effect
of trust, networks, norms and reciprocity creates a strong community,
with shared ownership over resources known as the commons.
The commons refers
to the creation of a pooled community resource, owned by no-one, used
by all. The short term self interest of each, if unchecked, would render
the common resource overused, and in the long term it would be destroyed.
Only where there is a strong ethos of trust, mutuality and effective informal
social sanctions against "free-riders" can the commons be maintained indefinitely
and to the mutual advantage of all.
6. Proactivity
What is implicit in
several of the above categories is a sense of personal and collective
efficacy. The development of social capital requires the active and willing
engagement of citizens within a participative community. This is quite
different from the receipt of services, or even of human rights to the
receipt of services, though these are unquestionably important. Social
capital refers to people as creators, not as victims.
Introduction
The study Measuring
Social Capital in five Communities in NSW attempts to answer two
questions:
- Is there such a
thing as "social capital", is, does the concept have an empirically
meaningful reality? And if so,
- Can we develop
a valid practical measure of social capital?
The study suggests
the answer to both questions is "yes".
The study measured
social capital in five communities in NSW: Deniliquin, Greenacre, Narellan,
Ultimo & Pyrmont and West Wyalong. These include rural, outer metropolitan
and inner city communities. Over 200 people in each of the five communities
(1211 people in all) were surveyed.
The study was a cooperative
venture and has attracted support from many people and organisations.
We would like to express our appreciation of the many individuals and
groups who contributed. As well as the work of the authors, it has included
support from:
- University of Technology
Sydney (which provided partial funding for the project through a Faculty
of Business Research Grant)
- The Local Community
Services Association of New South Wales
- Neighbourhood and
Community Centres especially the five Centres that undertook the survey
in their areas:
Bankstown
Community Services (Greenacre)
Camden Area Community Resource Centre (Narellan)
Deniliquin Council for Social Development (Deniliquin)
The Harris Centre (Ultimo&Pyrmont)
West Wyalong Neighbourhood Centre (West Wyalong)
- The many Academics
and Practitioners who contributed to the development of the instrument
and provided comment on the various drafts of this report.
Getting
Started
The study began in
October 1995 with exploratory discussions between a small group of academics
and practitioners at a Centre for Australian Community Organisations and
Management (CACOM) Advisory Committee meeting. The Faculty of Business
at UTS provided partial funding for the project in 1995/96 as a research
grant.
The conceptual framework
and key concepts were clarified by the researchers in the latter part
of 1995 and the first half of 1996.
Drafting
and Piloting the Questionnaire
A draft questionnaire
was developed and was piloted by students at UTS (Sydney) and workers
attending community services training sessions in Penrith, Taree and Tamworth
(mid 1996).
The final questionnaire
included several elements to tap each of the dimensions of:
Attitudes
(value of self)
Trust/ perceived safety
Participation in the local community
Reciprocity
Personal empowerment
Diversity/ openness
Relations within the workplace
Attitudes to government
Demographic information.
Questionnaires
- Out and Back
The questionnaire
was finalised and each of the five Neighbourhood Centres involved was
asked to obtain completed surveys for a reasonably random sample of 250
people in their community between the ages of 18 and 65.
The
Sample
The Centres collected
1211 completed questionnaires from November 1996 to March 1997.
Data
Analysis
The questionnaires
were analysed independently by both authors using SPSS and Statistica.
The goals of the statistical analysis were to:
a) Identify which
sets of attitudes, behaviours and knowledge were related to social capital
(and which ones were not)
b) Identify the elements
of social capital (factors)
c) Identify a good
set of questions for future use in measuring social capital in other communities
d) Identify whether
or not social capital was correlated with gender and other demographic
variables
e) Describe the five
communities in terms of the findings from a) to d) above.
The main statistical
tool used was Factor Analysis. Factor Analysis tries to identify statistically
the underlying dimensions of the set of questions, by locating clusters
of questions that are related to each other. See: Measuring
Social Capital in Five Communities In NSW, An Analysis for
full details of the statistical analysis and study methodology..
Some
of the principal findings from the study are:
- Social
capital is an empirical concept.
- It
is possible to measure social capital in local communities.
- There
is a generic social capital factor that can be measured.
- There
are also eight distinct elements that appear to define social capital.
They are:
A.
Participation in local community
B. Proactivity in a social context
C. Feelings of Trust and Safety
D. Neighbourhood Connections
E. Family and Friends Connections
F. Tolerance of Diversity
G. Value of Life
H. Work Connections
5.
Four of the elements are about participation and connections in various
arenas:
A.
Participation in local community
D. Neighbourhood Connections
E. Family and Friends Connections
H. Work Connections.
6.
Four of the elements are the building blocks of social capital:
B.
Proactivity in a social context
C. Feelings of Trust and safety
F. Tolerance of Diversity
G. Value of life.
7.
Social capital is not generally correlated with the demographic variables
such as age, gender, etc. There are some exceptions, for example women
are less likely to feel safe in their local communities than men; people
with more children are likely to participate more in the local community
than those with less children.
8.
There are significant differences in levels of social capital between
the five communities that were surveyed.
For
example, Deniliquin and West Wyalong have higher levels of social capital
overall than the other three communities.
In the study we identified
8 elements of social capital. Some of the questions that
contributed to each of the elements are listed below. The questions are
included here so you can gain a feel for the content of each of the eight
elements.
A.
Participation in the Local Community
- Do you help out
a local group as a volunteer?(16)
- Have you attended
a local community event in the past 6 months (eg, church fete, school
concert, craft exhibition)?(29)
- Are you an active
member of a local organisation or club (eg, sport, craft, social
club)?(31)
- Are you on a management
committee or organising committee for any local group of or organisation?(44)
- In the past 3 years,
have you ever joined a local community action to deal with an emergency?(46)
B.
Proactivity in a social context
- Have you ever picked
up other people's rubbish in a public place?(14)
- Do you go outside
your local community to visit your family?(37)
- If you need information
to make a life decision, do you know where to find that information?(41)
- If you disagree
with what everyone else agreed on, would you feel free to speak out?(54)
- If you have a dispute
with your neighbours (eg, over fences or dogs) are you willing to seek
mediation?(56)
- At work do you
take the initiative to do what needs to be done even if no one asks
you to?(65) (This question was only asked of those in paid employment)
C.
Feelings of Trust and Safety
- Do you feel safe
walking down your street after dark? (17)
- Do you agree that
most people can be trusted? (18)
- If someone's car
breaks down outside your house, do you invite them into your home to
use the phone? (19)
- Does your area
have a reputation for being a safe place? (24)
- Does your local
community feel like home?(33)
D.
Neighbourhood Connections
- Can you get help
from friends when you need it? (21)
- If you were caring
for a child and needed to go out for a while, would you ask a neighbour
for help? (26)
- Have you visited
a neighbour in the past week? (28)
- When you go shopping
in your local area are you likely to run into friends and acquaintances?
(39)
- In the past 6 months,
have you done a favour for a sick neighbour? (45)
E.
Family and Friends Connection
- In the past week,
how many phone conversations have you had with friends?(34)
- How many people
did you talk to yesterday?(35)
- Over the weekend
do you have lunch/dinner with other people outside your household?(36)
F.
Tolerance of Diversity
- Do you think that
multiculturalism makes life in your area better? (57)
- Do you enjoy living
among people of different life styles? (59)
G.
Value of Life
- Do you feel valued
by society? (1)
- If you were to
die tomorrow, would you be satisfied with what your life has meant?
(3)
H.
Work Connections
Note: These questions
were only asked of people in paid employment.
- Do you feel part
of the local geographic community where you work? (61)
- Are your workmates
also your friends? (62)
- Do you feel part
of a team at work? (63)
(The numbers in brackets
indicate the question number in the original questionnaire.)
5.
Practical Uses of the Social Capital Measure
The
Social Capital Scale
The social capital
scale developed in the study, like all empirically derived scales, is
simplistic. That is both its strength and its weakness. Its weakness lies
in the fact that no scale can deal adequately with the subtleties and
complexities of human life, and what basically refers to the quality of
life. It is nonsense to try and reduce the value of connectedness in the
life of the community, to a number!
However, its strength
lies in just this simplicity. In an economic rationalist world where ideology
says "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it" some form of quantitative
indicator of social capital is essential. The social capital scale provides
just such a reliable and valid indicator of the underlying health of the
community (for people who speak English as their first or second language
within an Australian cultural context).
The social capital
scale is but one simple indicator, and needs to be fleshed out with other,
more qualitative methods such as the use of case studies and "thick descriptions"
and reference to macro-social indicators such as crime or morbidity rates.
Questions
Some of the questions
that different groups may wish to consider are:
Government
- What are the impacts
of policy changes on the social capital in the community?
- What are the economic
implications of increasing or reducing social capital?
- Is the social capital
in communities changing over time? Why?
Community
Service Providers
- Are human services
being delivered in such a way that they not only deliver the service
but also increase the community's social capital?
- To what extent
are the current service users connected into the fabric of the community
and participating in the local community? How does their connectedness
compare with the general level of connectedness in the local community?
- Is the social capital
in the local community changing over time? Why?
- Does community
development make a difference to the level of social capital in the
community?
Employers
- Are businesses
and other organisation's culture and structures effective both
in economic terms and in increasing the social capital in the community?
- How can the workplace
be changed so the way the workplace works supports the development of
social capital?
Researchers
- Are the social
capital elements identified in this study culturally specific? Are the
questions in the questionnaire culturally specific?
Practical
Uses
These general questions
can give rise to more specific practical questions. For example:
- A community organisation
could undertake surveys of the local community every two years to monitor
the change in the level of the community's social capital over time.
- A community organisation
could measure the level of social capital of the local community (or
a particular group in the community) before and after the implementation
of a major community development project.
- A community centre
may wish to see how the levels of social capital in the local community
compares with other communities, for example, the five communities that
have been measured in this study - and so measure the social capital
in their community and compare it with the results in this report.
- An ethnic community
organisation may wish to measure the level of social capital within
its community and compare this with the levels of social capital in
other communities?
- A service provider
may wish to measure the social capital in the local community and then
compare this with the connectedness of a particular target group the
service provider is working with. For example: Are Neighbourhood and
Community Centres working with those who are already well connected
into the fabric of the community or with those who have little connections
(or both)?
- An employer may
wish to get a before and after measure of the connectedness of its employees
in the social fabric of their communities before and after implementing
an employee program designed to support the employees in their family
and community connections.
In all these situations
a questionnaire could be used as one strategy. A sample questionnaire
is included in the Reports.
The report
Measuring Social Capital in Five Communities: A Practitioners
Guide provides the detailed information you would need to measure
social capital in the situations above.
The 1997 LCSA Census
of Neighbourhood and Community Centres has been designed to start to answer
the question:
Are Neighbourhood
and Community Centres in NSW working with those who are already well connected
into the fabric of the community or with those who have little connections
(or both)?
Exploring the answer
to this question will help Neighbourhood and Community Centres examine
their role in the Community.
The data from the
LCSA 1997 Census will be analysed in conjunction with the data from the
Study Measuring Social Capital in Five Communities in NSW.
A separate report
on the findings from the 1997 LCSA Census will be available by mid-1998
from LCSA Tel: (02) 9211 3644.
6.
More Information
The complete write-up
of the study is in two reports. Report 1 is titled Measuring
Social Capital in Five Communities in NSW: an Analysis (59
pages) and includes the material most likely to be of interest to an
academic
audience. It is published as a CACOM Working Paper Series (No 41) . It
focuses on the conceptual and statistical analysis of the data as a
whole. It is
available from:
- Centre for Australian
Community Organisations and Management (CACOM)
- University of Technology,
Sydney
- Kuring-Gai Campus
Report 2 is titled
Measuring Social Capital in Five Communities in NSW: A Practitioners
Guide (101 pages) and includes the material most likely
to be of interest to community workers and government bodies. It is
published
by Management Alternatives Pty Ltd. The Practitioners Guide focuses on
the findings for each of the five communities. It provides sufficient
detail for practitioners to measure social capital in their own communities
and have comparative data from other communities available in interpreting
the results. The full report Measuring
Social Capital in Five Communities in NSW A
Practitioner's Guide (101pp) is available for on-line
purchase and download for A$20.00.
- Management Alternatives
Pty Ltd
- PO Box 181
- Coogee, NSW, 2034
Australia.
- www.mapl.com.au
Others are
welcome to use this study, its findings and the questions that we have
developed to further our understanding of social capital in our communities.
There are many avenues to explore (see for example, the questions in Section
5 above).
We ask of
those wishing to use the material, that:
You acknowledge
the source of the materials/ questions/ etc that you use.
You send a
copy of any findings, reports, etc to both authors.
- Paul Bullen,
- PO BOX 181, Coogee
NSW 2034 Australia
- Jenny Onyx,
CACOM, UTS,
- Box 222, Lindfield
NSW 2071 Australia
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