Social capital in rural areas: Spanish adaptation and factorial validation of a scale

INTRODUCTION:   Social capital is considered as a structural determinant of development and social wellbeing. Its cognitive component assesses the confidence degree of the population on their systems for social organization, either on institutions or community interactions which allow to coordinate social responses to social problems. There are few available scales for measuring this construct. This work presents the adaptation to Spanish and psychometric validation of a scale for measuring social capital in a rural setting

METHODS:   An adaptation to Spanish of the Wang Social Cognitive Scale was performed. 1200 questionnaires were applied to adults in 12 villages of the municipality of Tierra Alta, (Colombia) recruited with random sampling. A factor analysis of the scale was performed from a polichoric correlation matrix

RESULTS:   Exploratory factor analysis suggests the existence of two principal factors, distributed as follows: 7 items for factor 1, trust (eigenvalue 3.23) and 2 items (Q2, Q3), for the factor 2 –distrust- (eigenvalue 1.40). As reported in the original validation study, Q9 and Q10 could be ambiguous questions which do not contribute enough to neither of the factors.

CONCLUSIONS:   The first factorial validation to Spanish language of the Wang Social Capital Scale in Latin America is presented, with special regard in the rural Colombian setting.