Measuring the ‘Bridging’ versus ‘Bonding’ Nature of Social Networks: A Proposal for Integrating Existing Measures

Benny Geys and Zuzana Murdoch

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2010, vol. 44, issue 3, 523-540

Abstract: Recent research illustrates that two distinct interpretations and operationalizations of ‘bridging’ and ‘bonding’ social networks co-exist in the literature (based on links between diverse networks or between socio-economic groups within a given network, respectively), and that these do not coincide in empirical applications. The present contribution first confirms this conclusion using data from the United Kingdom. Then, we suggest a simple way to integrate both existing approaches into a more general measure of bridging and bonding. Applying this more general index to UK and Flemish data, a) provides stronger empirical support for the idea that memberships in bridging groups are more strongly linked to positive civic values than those in bonding ones, and b) shows that the extended index behaves more consistently across institutional settings (i.e. Flanders and the UK) than both underlying measures independently.

Keywords: bonding; bridging; civic engagement; social networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:343945

DOI: 10.1177/0038038510362474

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