Bridging and bonding : Multi-dimensional approach to regional social capital

This study advances the operationalization of social capital by (1) employing an existing dataset – the Social Capital Benchmark Survey (SCBS) – to empirically probe the “dimensionality” of social capital for American sub-national regions, and (2) explicating this dimensional structure by examining the relationship of multi-dimensional social capital with regional economic growth. [...] The present study investigates the nature and functioning of social capital in the context of economic growth. [...] Therefore, the SCBS is of tremendous value to us because it is the first survey to measure social capital in a variety of different ways for regions and communities within the United States. [...] The SCBS consists of hundreds of questions on political, religious, and social forms of involvement and engagement, attitudes about various social issues of contemporary concern, and the character of one’s personal relationships with others. [...] However, the composite variables in the SCBS, however imperfect they may be, still enable us to learn something interesting about the character and nature of the social connections in a place, irregardless of the fact that they are aggregations of individual level data.