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Social capital across Europe - findings, trends and methodological shortcomings of cross-national surveys
[working paper]
Corporate Editor
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung gGmbH
Abstract "Two sets of issues are elaborated and reflected on. The first one concerns the
distribution of stocks of social capital across European (EU) nations. Using the
conventional proxies like trust and associational involvement on the basis of data of
cross-national surveys (EVS/WVS and ESS) the main ten... view more
"Two sets of issues are elaborated and reflected on. The first one concerns the
distribution of stocks of social capital across European (EU) nations. Using the
conventional proxies like trust and associational involvement on the basis of data of
cross-national surveys (EVS/WVS and ESS) the main tentative trends and patterns are
outlined. The second issue refers to the quality of data. Are the findings and indicators
reliable and credible? Are the EVS and other available European surveys a
methodologically correct and sufficient source of empirical evidence?
Concerning the first issue, it is possible to speak of four groups with regard to the
distribution of social capital at the European level. In contrast to authors who argue that
there are no large differences in mean scores across the national patterns, this analysis
arrives at more differentiated conclusions. Between the first and fourth group a very
clear borderline can be drawn while differences between the second and third groups are
not so pronounced. In the context of the thematising and critical reflection of the
validity and comparability of the empirical evidence some errors and inconsistencies
were found. It seems that they appeared partly due to the inappropriate technical design
of cross-national surveys and also because of the semantic-cultural as well as
institutional factors which have not been paid much attention, partly in the stage of
preparing and conducting the survey as well as in the phase of interpreting and
generalizing of the data." (author's abstract)... view less
Keywords
quality; EU; international comparison; survey; data; method; validity; social capital; data capture; interpretation; reliability
Classification
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture
Methods and Techniques of Data Collection and Data Analysis, Statistical Methods, Computer Methods
Method
development of methods; basic research
Document language
English
Publication Year
2006
City
Berlin
Page/Pages
29 p.
Series
Discussion Papers / Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, 2006-010
Licence
Deposit Licence - No Redistribution, No Modifications
Data providerThis metadata entry was indexed by the Special Subject Collection Social Sciences, USB Cologne