What is social capital?
Social capital ("community connectedness") refers to social networks and the norms of reciprocity that arise from them. A growing body of hard-nosed literature over the last several years shows that social capital, and the trust, reciprocity, information, and cooperation associated with it, enables many important individual and social goods. Communities with higher levels of social capital are likely to have higher educational achievement, better performing governmental institutions, faster economic growth, and less crime and violence. And the people living in these communities are likely to be happier, healthier, and to have a longer life expectancy.

What is the role of community foundations?
Community foundations believe that the levels of social capital in our communities are of critical importance to the overall health of the community. Community foundations are social capital builders, committed to working with all groups in their communities to deploy experimental solutions to build their communities. The survey was designed in response to their desire to measure the overall success of communities in building social capital.

Mechanics of survey: Surveys were conducted by Taylor Nelson Sofres Intersearch Corporation by phone between July 2000 and November 2000. The survey has been developed by the Saguaro Seminar at the John F. Kennedy School of Government with the involvement of a Scientific Advisory Group consisting of leading experts around the country on social capital measurement.

The national sample consisted of 3000 respondents, including a two-times oversample of Hispanics and African-Americans. In addition, community samples, with 26,200 collective respondents, were conducted in 40 communities; the local sponsor of the community samples determined the sampling geography. Each community sample consisted of at least 500 interviews.