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Christofer Edling

Christofer Edling

Dean | Professor

Christofer Edling

The effects of specific occupations in position generator measures of social capital

Author

  • Martin Hällsten
  • Christofer Edling
  • Jens Rydgren

Summary, in English

The position generator is a widespread method for measuring latent social capital in which respondents are queried about contacts on a list of occupations predefined by the analyst. We separate out the unique contribution of each occupation to aggregated measures of social capital. It turns out that this contribution varies vastly: knowing a person in some occupations provides substance to measures of social capital, while knowing a person in a few occupations is irrelevant and contributes statistical noise and causes attenuation bias. We discuss the implication of our findings for the design of position generator measures generally.

Department/s

  • Sociology

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Pages

55-63

Publication/Series

Social Networks

Volume

40

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)

Keywords

  • social capital
  • position generator
  • measurement error
  • Jack-knife
  • sociologi
  • sociology

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0378-8733