Measuring Social Capital in a Philippine Slum

Abstract

Social capital is crucial for slum dwellers’ survival.The central question of this article concerns how social capital can be measured. Through testing in the field, the authors optimized the position generator method for application in a Philippine slum; furthermore, they developed a special name generator to examine who gains social capital in particular community-based activities. And they were able to administer the whole measurement instrument without major difficulties to all available adults in a selected Philippine slum community. Finally, the authors inductively derived two subscales for measurement of identified domains in the social capital data and examined their relation to the respondents’ type of access to potable water.