Once an organization has identified the social capital elements in its programs and specified pathways through which its activities contribute to social capital formation, it can formulate plans to evaluate its social capital impact. Somewhat artificially, we break down this process into steps 4 and 5: Step 4 involves the basic design questions, such as the study's timeframe and the choice of study populations; Step 5 concerns the nuts and bolts of fielding a survey-based evaluation. You can also access a list of social capital survey questions intended to help organizations develop their own survey instruments.

STEP 4: Designing the Evaluation

The design of the evaluation hinges on answering a sequence of questions discussed below. The answers to these questions flow directly from the earlier discussion of what the program is trying to do.

WHO IS THE STUDY GROUP? (expand)

HOW CAN WE BEST IMPLEMENT A BASIC "BEFORE AND AFTER" STUDY FRAMEWORK? (expand)

SHOULD WE USE A COMPARISON GROUP? AND, IF SO, WHO? (expand)

WHAT SHOULD WE MEASURE? (collapse)

Task 5: Identify Measurable Aspects of Social Capital

Now that we know whom we are asking questions of, what questions are we asking them? This will vary substantially from program to program, but the survey instruments that every organization develops will probably include four categories of questions as seen below.

Note for programs using control groups: control or comparison group respondents will likely be asked only the questions in categories (1) and (4) and possibly one or two questions from category (3). For example, we need to ask whether the comparison subject has been exposed to the program under evaluation or one like it. The program participants would get all four categories.

1) THE RESPONDENTS' GENERAL LEVEL OF SOCIAL CAPITAL

The general assessment of social capital lies at the core of the evaluation. Our Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey of over 30,000 Americans identified 11 dimensions of social capital. In the realm of intelligence, not all people strong on one dimension, say spatial intelligence, are strong on another, say verbal skills. But as with types of intelligence, most dimensions of social capital roughly correlate with each other: an individual exhibiting an above average level of informal socializing is probably likely to be above average in formal group involvement or social trust, even though there are clearly many exceptions. Even though your program may be interested in only one or two social capital dimensions specifically, we recommend that you ask questions from all the dimensions so you can get a fuller sense of the types of social capital being built or not being built.

We recommend that all programs ask as many of the core questions on social capital as possible. This should leave additional time in the survey for demographics and exploring in further the types of social ties that the program is interested in exploring more in-depth.

2) PROGRAM-SPECIFIC TIES AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

These questions can be separated into: a) those measuring social ties directly associated with the program and b) those that measure the level of trust and respect in the program or surrounding community. The specific form of these questions depends so much upon program and organizational characteristics that we cannot recommend exact questions. However, the generic social capital measures, provide a model for these more particular questions, in addition to providing useful questions from different domains (workplace, family, neighborhood, school-based social capital, etc.) that may well give you good ideas for questions in the domains in which you are most interested.

3) RESPONDENTS' EXPOSURE TO AND USE OF THE PROGRAM

The analysis in Identifying Program Links to Social Capital (Step 3 ) should identify the various opportunities created by the program for participants, volunteers, staff, and the community-at-large to interact with one another. These opportunities hopefully initiate the ties that the program-specific measures of social capital will measure. These questions ask how the study group actually interacted with these program features.

We want to measure how much time they spent, for example:

• Using common spaces
• Socializing before or after classes, meetings, or events
• Attending lectures, classes, and workshops
• Whether they followed referrals or other recommendations
• How convenient they found participation in various aspects of the program
• How comfortable they felt socializing with others in program settings
• Impressions on how important different aspects of the program were
• Which program components they enjoyed the most

Note that the factual questions related to program use can sometimes be complemented with non-survey sources, such as staff observation or administrative records (time cards, sign-in sheets, attendance records, etc.). These sources provide a good cross-check against survey-based information sources. To this end, organizations should examine their existing evaluation procedures to explore the possibility of expanding them to include considerations of social capital. These questions will help give program ideas about whether participants are building social capital through the channels that the organization expects. For example, a daycare provider might speculate that a weekly coffee half-hour was essential for daycare providers and parents to meet one another and form ties. However, if an evaluation showed that the kind of social ties that parents had with the daycare providers had no correlation with whether parents went to this coffee half-hour (or how often they went), it should tell the organization that the coffee half-hour is not the key ingredient in these social relationships forming, although some other factor might be key.

4) DEMOGRAPHIC AND OTHER RELEVANT RESPONDENT CHARACTERISTICS

Click here for a short list of demographic concepts that research has shown to be related to social capital formation. These include education, age, income level, race, gender, religion, marital and family status, homeownership status, and the number of years the respondent has lived in the same community or location. Organizations surveying staff or volunteers may also want to know the respondent's years of experience and their type of employment.

Ongoing example: what are some questions Jumpahead asked?

STEP 5: Conducting an Evaluation