Measuring Social Capital

The idea of social capital has enjoyed a remarkable rise to prominence in both the theoretical and applied social science literature over the last decade. While lively debate has accompanied that journey, thereby helping to advance our thinking and to clarify areas of agreement and disagreement, much still remains to be done. One approach that we hope can help bring further advances for both scholars and practitioners is the provision of a set of empirical tools for measuring social capital. The purpose of this paper is to introduce such a tool-the Integrated Questionnaire for the Measurement of Social Capital (SC-IQ)-with a focus on applications in developing countries. The tool aims to generate quantitative…