Measuring the bridging nature of voluntary organizations: a note on the importance of association size

Arbeitspapier

Recently, a distinction between cross-cutting (or bridging) and closed (or bonding) networks has been proposed in the social capital literature. One approach to empirically operationalize this distinction builds on connections between voluntary associations through individuals with multiple memberships. However, simply counting the number of members’ additional memberships in other associations, as in previous work, is inappropriate. Indeed, we illustrate that this is biased towards finding that large associations are more bonding. We then propose a technique to alleviate this bias and illustrate that the proposed correction is crucial to avoid erroneous conclusions in tests of the hypothesis that membership in bridging or bonding associations is differently related to individuals’ civic attitudes.

Object Details

• Alternative title: Untersuchung des bridging Charakters von zivilgesellschaftlichen Organisationen: Zur Bedeutung der Vereinsgröße
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: WZB Discussion Paper ; No. SP II 2007-04

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft
• Subject: Bridging and bonding ; flemish municipalities ; methodology ; social capital ; voluntary associations

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Coffé, Hilde ; Geys, Benny
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB)
• (where): Berlin
• (when): 2007

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/51068
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET