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Exploration of Factor Structure and Measurement Invariance by Gender for a Modified Shortened Adapted Social Capital Assessment Tool in India
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Exploration of Factor Structure and Measurement Invariance by Gender for a Modified Shortened Adapted Social Capital Assessment Tool in India

Md Zabir Hasan, Jeannie-Marie Leoutsakos, William T Story, Lorraine T Dean, Krishna D Rao and Shivam Gupta
Frontiers in psychology, Vol.10, pp.2641-2641
12/11/2019
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02641
PMCID: PMC6918543
PMID: 31920771
url
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02641View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Social capital is defined as the nature of the social relationship between individuals or groups and the embedded resources available through their social network. It is considered as a critical determinant of health and well-being. Thus, it is essential to assess the performance of any tool when meaningfully comparing social capital between specific groups. Using measurement invariance (MI) analysis, this paper explored the factor structure of the social capital of men and women measured by a modified Shortened Adapted Social Capital Assessment Tool (SASCAT-I) in rural Uttar Pradesh (UP), India. The study sample comprised 5,287 men (18–101 years) and 7,186 women (15–45 years) from 6,218 randomly selected households who responded to SASCAT-I during a community-level cross-sectional survey. Social capital factor structure was examined by both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and MI across genders was investigated using multigroup CFA. While disregarding gender, four unique factors ( Organizational Participation , Social Support , Trust , and Social Cohesion ) represented the structure of social capital. The MI analysis presented a partial metric-invariance indicating factor loadings for Organizational Participation and Social Support were the same across genders. The gender-stratified analysis demonstrated that a four-factor solution was best fitted for both men and women. Men and women of rural UP interpreted social capital differently as the perception of Trust and Social Cohesion varied across genders. For any future applications of SASCAT-I, we recommend gender-stratified factor analysis to quantify social capital’s measure, acknowledging its multidimensionality.
 factor analysis gender India measurement invariance Psychology social capital

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