The review suggests four key principles for measuring community strength and social capital:
- distinguish between the structure (size, density) of community networks and their content (norms of trust, reciprocity and participation)
- specify precisely the geographical area and/or type of organisation to which measures apply
- develop measures of community/networks/social capital that can be validly presented at both individual and aggregate levels
- always asses the costs and benefits of social capital empirically and never assume that all social capital is benign.
Full paper:
Communities, social capital and public policy: literature review