When searching for literature on tools and methods for measuring social capital I found a useful article called Measurement of Social Capital(a cup cake to the one who guesses my search words). In part 2 of the article a whole list of specific tools for gathering data about networks. And in part 3 quantitative and qualitative methods are discussed. As I’m trying to make a list of tools (and ressources eventually) on the rather dusty wiki and at the same time writing a working paper on the measurement of social capital, I would very much like to hear if anybody knows of any good overview articles on methods and tools regarding social capital?
6 comments so far
Thanks for sharing the article Jane. That must have required some good digging skills to find:-) It’s definitely a good overview article about social capital measurement and although the primary focus is on networks and larger entities (nations, societies, industries) there is much inspiration to find.
I’m particularly inspired by Appendix 15 that gives an example on how we can address the impact of a project or IT-implementation on social capital. If you think of social software in this context, the answers to the questions posed are quite encouraging. Or what do you think?
I haven’t read many articles about measurement yet, but these sites contains a list of articles that I plan to dig into later:
http://www.socialcapitalgateway.org/NV-eng-measurement.htm
http://www.gnudung.com/literature/measurement.html
I’ll let you know if I find some gold nuggets:-)
Hi Thomas. Thanks for your comment. I agree with you that there’s a lot of inspiration to be gathered from the article even though it doesn’t adress a web/software setting at all. But I’m not sure it has to, not when we talk about methods and tools. It’s not that I think that everything is easily transferred between different domains. But both when it comes to the analysis and the methods you can gain good insights by searching, and comparing across several domains.
Thanks for the links. I didn’t know of the latter one.
Hi Jane
First of all: all the best of luck with your research which I’d be very interested in following - keep us updated on the blog :)
Social network, network theory and social network analysis (SNA) is definitely are very interesting fields of research. What really got me with these issues is 1) it deals with people and relations, 2) it is intangible yet easy to grasp (in the beginning at least!) and lastly 3) it is greatly under-appreciated by established research and organisational designers. The so-called web2.0 evolution has gotten a lot of people thinking about social networks - both within acedemia and business environments.
I did my thesis on SNA back in 2005 (Social Network Analysis of Symbion Science Park – examining the content and structure of the network in a science park) and came across a lot of useful tools, journals and books on the topic. Obviously this might already be a bit dated, but I am quite sure that the basic theory, math and statistics behind the research is still relevant. I’d be happy to share the thesis, reference lists or anything else that might have your interest.
One good source for research papers and software could be http://www.analytictech.com/ by Steve Borgatti as well as Steve’s own page at http://www.analytictech.com/borgatti/. A good and straight forward introduction to quantitative analysis of networks could be Scott’s http://www.amazon.com/Social-Network-Analysis-John-Scott/dp/0761963391
We primarily used UciNet and NetDraw as SNA tools and especially UciNet was a powerful tool for both calculations and visualisations of social networks.
Cheers,
Klaus
@Klaus: Thank you so much. I’m glad that you found my blog. I agree with all your points of motivation, how ever I don’t know if you can imagine how much more intangible things get when you as I put most energy into qualitative methods, not to mention the challenges of your point number 3 :-). Ealier I did a post on that particular subject: http://wexploration.com/2007/11/13/challenge-1/#comment-38 Especially the third comment by Karsten I find very rewarding.
I would very much like to see your thesis and thanks for sharing links with me. Btw my colleague Anne Hodal is just finishing her SNA-thesis now. I’11 make sure she sees this as well.
Hi Jane
I can’t belive I spent the entire day at the Widepeek conference without realising that you were the “Jane” present at the conferencee. Somehow I must have missed the relation between your blog and Wemind. The discussions about social network analysis today reminded me of your blog and my post in it and *puf* the connectiong was of course obvious.
Anyway, great conference today - well done everyone at Wemind!
I have e-mailed you our thesis. I hope you find it useful and not too ZzzzZZz.. :) Feel free to get in touch if you’d like to discuss any of the stuff in there or SNA in general.
Thanks again to all of you for a very inspirational conference.
Hi Klaus. Thanks for your kind words. We are all very pleased with the conference mainly because of the ever avid participants.
And thanks for sending me your thesis. I’ll read it during my easter holiday.