Saltar al contenido
Blog de invitados de Gaceta Sanitaria

Blog de invitados de Gaceta Sanitaria

Espacio para discutir sobre los artículos publicados y temas de actualidad relacionados con la línea editorial

  • Acerca de
  • Entradas
    • Comité Editorial
    • Gestión Sanitaria
    • Salud Pública
  • Privacidad

Suscríbete a nuestro Boletín

Comprueba tu bandeja de entrada o de spam ahora para confirmar tu suscripción.

Últimas noticias

Etiquetas

actividad física adaptación al cambio alimentación Atención integrada Atención Primaria autocuidado calidad asistencial calidad de vida capital social comité editorial costes sanitarios COVID crisis económica derechos humanos Desigualdades en salud determinantes sociales diabetes Enfermedad de Alzheimer Evaluación de tecnologias sanitarias formación género Hombres Iatrogenia Incentivos innovación innovación tecnológica Intervenciones Investigación-Acción Participativa legislación LGTBI Masculinidades Mayores modelo activos en salud Multimorbilidad pacientes crónicos Personas cuidadoras Pluripatología políticas públicas Prescripción inapropiada promoción de la salud publicidad salutogenesis satisfacción trastorno del sueño Uso inadecuado de medicamentos

Archivos

  • enero 2021
  • diciembre 2020
  • noviembre 2020
  • octubre 2020
  • septiembre 2020
  • agosto 2020
  • julio 2020
  • mayo 2020
  • abril 2020
  • marzo 2020
  • febrero 2020
  • enero 2020
  • diciembre 2019
  • octubre 2019
  • septiembre 2019
  • agosto 2019
  • junio 2019
  • abril 2019
  • marzo 2019
  • febrero 2019
  • enero 2019
  • diciembre 2018
  • noviembre 2018
  • octubre 2018
  • septiembre 2018
  • julio 2018
  • mayo 2018
  • abril 2018
  • marzo 2018
  • enero 2018
  • diciembre 2017
  • noviembre 2017
  • octubre 2017
  • septiembre 2017
  • agosto 2017
  • julio 2017
  • junio 2017
  • mayo 2017
  • abril 2017
  • marzo 2017
  • febrero 2017
  • enero 2017
  • diciembre 2016
  • noviembre 2016
  • octubre 2016
  • septiembre 2016
  • julio 2016

RSS Blogosfera Gaceta Sanitaria

  • El papel (potencial) de la salud pública en la promoción de la sociedad del cuidado (1ª parte)
    8 Jan 2021, 4:11 pm
  • El año de la COP25. #TiempoDeActuar: Protege el clima para proteger tu salud
    16 Jan 2020, 2:06 pm
  • ¿Sobreviven más personas al Covid-19 porque los médicos estamos haciendo menos?
    15 Jan 2021, 9:31 pm
  • [Algunas notas sobre COVID-19 en Asturias. Comisión de Estudio de la gestión de la crisis sanitaria COVID-19]
    29 Jul 2020, 1:54 pm
  • (N/V)uestra tregua indefinida
    24 Mar 2017, 2:56 pm
  • Respuesta del Secretario General de la Presidencia
    30 Jan 2020, 6:15 pm
  • La revolución de la cebolla
    1 Jan 2020, 8:30 am
  • ¿ Es el ojo de la tormenta el mejor lugar para evaluar la gestión de la covid-19 en España?
    29 Dec 2020, 1:13 am
  • Nuevo buscador avanzado de L·OVE #COVID-19
    23 Sep 2020, 7:56 pm
  • Transparencia: a propósito del misterio del comité de expertos
    11 Jan 2021, 6:16 pm
  • ¿El año de la epidemiología? Esperemos que no
    31 Dec 2020, 6:27 pm
  • La vacuna de la gripe en tiempos de covid19. Quince preguntas
    12 Oct 2020, 10:19 am
  • Priorizar Servicios Sanitarios para no seguir saliendo del paso
    28 Dec 2020, 9:30 am
  • Las rutas de la escalada: Rumbo a Ítaca
    8 Jul 2020, 12:57 am
  • Nuevo videochat sobre dolor y cannabis con Carola Pérez, presidenta del Observatorio de Cannabis Medicinal miércoles 2 de diciembre, 19:00 en el canal de youtube de la Escuela de Pacientes
    1 Dec 2020, 5:23 pm

Etiqueta: capital social

The importance of theory in the measurement of social capital. A comment on Carrillo Alvarez and Riera Romani

“To Measure is to Know” – Lord Kelvin

Social capital is a slippery term whose conceptualization generates a lot of controversy and debate. The proliferation of scholarly articles on this topic has grown in the last decades, including a Methodological Note in Gaceta Sanitaria by Villalonga-Olives and Kawachi (Villalonga-Olives and Kawachi, 2015), where they discuss the different definitions of social capital. A new article in Gaceta Sanitaria by Carrillo Alvarez and Riera Romani (2016) has shed more light on the topic of social capital by highlighting the different ways to measure social capital on three levels: macro (countries or regions), meso (local areas, such as neighborhoods or organizations) and micro (individuals).

Carrillo and Riera begin their paper by summarizing the origins of the concept and the two main sociological schools of thought that have worked on this topic (Bourdieu and Coleman/Putnam) and how these schools have been materialized into two different conceptualizations of the term: a social cohesion and a network-based approach. Following the latter, the authors further delineate the different subconstructs, components, and scales of social capital. The authors cogently argue that with such a complex network of concepts, “using systematized social capital measures will allow to gain a stronger foundation on how the associations between the different aspects [of] social capital and each specific health outcome occur […]”. The rest of the paper is a concise but thorough guideline to the measurement of social capital at the macro, meso and micro levels, further distilled in Table 1.

This paper offers useful guidelines for scholars interested in the measurement of social capital, with particular emphasis on its use in health studies. Measurement error is a pervasive form of bias in epidemiology that has gotten less attention than others such as selection bias or confounding. Only recently has literature emerged on how to incorporate this type of error in the hegemonic framework for causal inference, the potential outcomes framework(Edwards et al., 2015). Therefore, any improvement in the measurement of social capital and all efforts in systematizing such measurement are welcome and will improve the quality of future studies.

One specific insight I would like to add to this paper is to re-emphasize the importance of theory, in particular stressing the importance of taking into consideration the differentiation that Carrillo and Riera make in the first few paragraphs of their paper: social capital as a part of a dynamic conceptualization of society, one that changes through struggles and conflict (Bourdieu) versus social capital as a part of a static conceptualization of society (Putnam, Coleman), where capital encompasses social cohesion that includes the absence of conflict (as defined by Kawachi and Berkman). While this may seem as exclusively an academic discussion on theoretical concepts (and we have had a few of these discussions (Carrasco and Bilal, 2016a, b; Lindström, 2016), I would argue this has profound implications on the ways to measure social capital. If we assume Bourdieu’s definition of social capital, the measurement process needs to incorporate the dynamic nature of the concept. For example: adopting a dynamic view of society explicitly requires the researcher to consider that each individual is part of a bigger entity (the society) where a relational approach is fundamental(Cummins et al., 2007). That is, social capital does not “exist in itself”, and only exists because it can be spent on “something”. Much like economic capital, social capital only acquires meaning within a certain societal arrangement (Bourdieu, 1986). Therefore, while this form of capital is accrued by individuals, it only makes sense when it is related to groups (see the examples in heading 6 of this paper(Carrasco and Bilal, 2016b)). On the other hand, a static view of social capital can exist in itself, and leads to measurements that do not require of the collective for the inferences to be interpretable.

To exemplify how important these differences are, take a look at the figure below, redrawn from Thomas A. Glass, PhD.

bilal1

It shows a conceptualization of social capital as the “water that flows through the pipes laid out by the social network of society”. Importantly, in this conceptualization, social capital in itself does not require of individuals for its measurement (as opposed to social support, that is entirely a micro-level phenomenon). Understanding what corresponds to the macro level and what corresponds to the micro-level is the first step that any researcher in social capital must take.

In summary, the paper by Carrillo and Riera offers a very useful guideline for the measurement of social capital at different scales. Researchers will be well served by following their prescription regarding measurement tools and conceptualizations. Nonetheless, as we have argued before (Carrasco and Bilal, 2016a) researchers will be also well served by (a) doing an explicit declaration of the theoretical framework they use to conceptualize social capital and (b) thinking of the consequences of using alternative frameworks.

 

bilal2Usama Bilal is a PhD Candidate in Cardiovascular Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. I am interested in the effects of macrosocial and local change on cardiovascular risk factors. I acted as a journal reviewer for the paper by Carrillo and Riera.

 

References

Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. Readings in economic sociology,  280-291.

Carrasco, M.A., Bilal, U. (2016a). Are subversion and conflict component parts of social cohesion?: A reply to Lindstrom. Social Science & Medicine. 169,  31-32.

Carrasco, M.A., Bilal, U. (2016b). A sign of the times: To have or to be? Social capital or social cohesion? Social Science & Medicine. 159,  127-131.

Carrillo Álvarez, E., Riera Romaní, J. (2016). Measuring social capital: further insights. Gaceta Sanitaria,

Cummins, S., Curtis, S., Diez-Roux, A.V., Macintyre, S. (2007). Understanding and representing ‘place’ in health research: a relational approach. Soc Sci Med. 65  (9),  1825-1838.

Edwards, J.K., Cole, S.R., Westreich, D. (2015). All your data are always missing: incorporating bias due to measurement error into the potential outcomes framework. International journal of epidemiology. 44  (4),  1452-1459.

Lindström, M. (2016). Are subversion and conflict component parts of social cohesion? Social Science & Medicine. 169,  106-108.

Villalonga-Olives, E., Kawachi, I. (2015). The measurement of social capital. Gaceta Sanitaria. 29  (1),  62-64.

Publicado el 30 noviembre, 201614 mayo, 2017Autor Editor Gaceta SanitariaCategorías gestión sanitariaEtiquetas capital social
Creado con WordPress