Ethno-racial Diversity and Social Capital in English Schools
Abstract
Since the racial disturbances in the Northern English towns of Bradford, Oldham and
Burnley, the belief has gained strength in educational circles that ethnically mixed
schools contribute to inter-community trust and social cohesion. Several recent studies
from the field of political science, however, have found that trust and participation are
lower in ethnically diverse neighborhoods. This paper explores the relation between
ethno-racial diversity and social capital in English schools using data from the IEA Civic
Education Study. Controlling for various conditions at the individual and school class
level, it finds no effect of diversity on generalized trust and ethnic tolerance. Diversity is
positively related to participation in human rights and environmental organizations and
participation in ethnic and religious associations, however. It further finds social capital,
particularly its bridging form, to be a complex multidimensional phenomenon.
Consequently, it proposes to decompose social capital into its constituent parts – trust,
participation and tolerance.
Key words: social capital, bonding, bridging, ethnic and racial diversity, schools
1
Introduction
Desegregation has been a prime educational objective throughout the western world over
the last forty years. Initially, the effort to create ethnically and racially mixed schools was
motivated by indignation about racial inequality and discrimination produced by
segregated school systems. The Civic Rights movement in the US came to epitomize this
effort in its struggle to achieve civic equality, integration and emancipation for African
Americans. The term ‘desegregation’ itself was very much part of and restricted to a
social justice discourse.
From the late 1990s, however, the objective of mixed schools also started to be
embraced by scholars concerned about declining levels of community cohesion and
growing ethnic and religious intolerance. These scholars felt that the prevailing practices
of multiculturalism and recognition of minority cultures had only reinforced the isolation
of ethnic and racial minorities and had led to more divisiveness. Herbert (2001), for
instance, argued that faith schools serving the needs of particular ethnic groups constitute
a kind of ‘educational apartheid’ segregating rather than integrating various ethnic
communities. A string of events in the early 2000s – Nine-Eleven, the racial disturbances
in the Northern English towns of Bradford, Oldham and Burnley, and the London and
Madrid underground bombings – added great weight to the analysis of these scholars and
led to the adoption of their views by various policy makers and government advisers.
Thus, the Cantle Report, commissioned by the British Home Office, suggested that
ethnically segregated schools have contributed to the disorders in Bradford, Oldham and
Burnley and explicitly called for admissions policies maximizing the proportion of pupils
2
of the same cultural or ethnic background at 75 per cent in schools in multi-cultural areas
(Cantle 2001).
However, at a time when a consensus in education circles about the benefits of
ethnic mixing seems to be growing, a tradition in the political science field pointing to the
negative effects of diversity on social capital, trust and solidarity is also gaining strength.
A recent important contribution in this tradition is the study on local level community
cohesion in the United States by Putnam (2007). His main finding is that people in
ethnically and racially diverse communities exhibit not only less out-group but also less
in-group trust compared to people in homogenous neighborhoods. In other words,
diversity has a “constricting” effect (p. 144), making people in diverse surroundings
“hunker down – that is, to pull in like turtles” (p. 149).
This raises the obvious question whether Putnam’s findings also apply to schools,
like the neighbourhood a local level phenomenon. In other words, is it possible that
schools with a mixed ethnic intake do not produce cross-cultural integration and bridging
social capital (as hoped for by the Cantle report) but rather its opposite: isolation,
disengagement and distrust? We will explore this question in the present paper by
analyzing survey data collected among 14 year olds in England. We find, firstly, that
social capital, particularly its bridging variety, is a complex phenomenon comprised of
quite unrelated behavioral and attitudinal components. We further find that the effect of
diversity on the attitudinal component (generalized trust and ethnic tolerance) is merely
compositional and therefore spurious. Its effect on the behavioral component
(participation in several organizations) is positive however, which supports the notion
3
that ethnic mixing contributes to inter-ethnic harmony (i.e. the key assumption of the
Cantle report).
We start by discussing the much used concept of social capital, the dependent
variable of this paper. We then review the political science literature on relation between
diversity and social capital and examine to what extent educational studies have
addressed this issue. Subsequently, we discuss the data source, research design and
methodology used for the analyses. Finally we present the results of these analyses. The
conclusions rehearse the main findings and offer suggestions for further research.
Social capital
A term widely used in the social sciences to include notions of trust, cooperation and
community cohesion is social capital. In fact, Putnam has been recognized as the key
scholar promoting this concept ever since he published Making Democracies Work: Civic
Traditions in Modern Italy (1993), in which he argued that social capital enhances the
performance of democratic government. In his 2007 study it is therefore the relation
between diversity and social capital that Putnam essentially examines, albeit with a
strong focus on trust as one of its components. Defining the concept as “social networks
and the associated norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness” (Putnam 2007: 137), he
contends that social capital, like monetary and human capital, is a desirable asset in that it
contributes to the health, happiness, civic mindedness and career opportunities of the
individuals who possess it. Social capital is further said to have positive spillover effects
4
for outsiders: living in an area rich in social networks contributes to trust in neighbors
and feelings of safety even if one does not join community life oneself. As we seek to
replicate Putnam’s study for schools, we adopt his definition of the term and will
operationalise the concept in accordance with this definition.
Embracing Putnam’s definition of social capital does not mean that we apply the
term without reservations. Two important objections can be raised. First, as the term
incorporates several notions with some referring to attitudes (trust and norms) and others
to behaviors (networks, association, cooperation), it can be criticized for being an
incoherent concept comprising a number of disparate components. This criticism does not
seem to be of great concern to Putnam, though, as he simply assumes social capital to
refer to a coherent syndrome of attitudes and behaviors at the individual level:
Our discussion of trends in social connectedness and civic engagement has tacitly
assumed that all the forms of social capital that we have discussed are themselves
coherently correlated across individuals. This is in fact true. Members of associations are
much more likely than non-members to participate in politics, to spend time with
neighbors, to express social trust and so on (Putnam 1995: 73).
To be sure, there is research supporting this assumption for a number of western
countries including the US and Great Britain (Brehm and Rahn 1997; Hall 1999).
However, studies examining a much larger set of countries have found the components of
social capital to be only weakly correlated across individuals (Newton and Norris 2000;
Janmaat 2006). Janmaat (2006) moreover argues that the external distinctiveness of the
concept can be called into question because the correlations among the social capital
5
components are not stronger than the correlations of these components with external
conditions. From a policy perspective working with concepts that are not internally
consistent is troublesome, as it may well mean that interventions aimed at fostering one
particular component do not contribute to other components – or worse affect them
negatively (see also Janmaat 2008; Tolsma et al 2008). In the empirical section we will
therefore explore to what extent our indicators of social capital intercorrelate and form a
distinctive syndrome.
Secondly, it has been pointed out that social capital can take many forms, some of
which are not commendable such as youth gangs, ethnic militias or terrorist
organizations. Putnam (2007: 138) is the first to acknowledge this, calling for instance Al
Qaeda “an excellent example of social capital, enabling its participants to accomplish
goals they could not accomplish without that network”. Yet, he maintains that social
capital by and large is a positive phenomenon leading to happier, healthier and better
educated people and making democracy and the economy work better. Still, in our view
this objection cannot be dismissed this easily, particularly because it relates to that other
important issue in social capital theory: the distinction between bonding and bridging
forms of social capital. The bonding variety refers to small, culturally homogenous
communities characterized by ‘thick’ forms of trust, solidarity and cohesion, and high
levels of exclusion. Bridging forms, by contrast, refer to broad outward-looking networks
uniting people of various backgrounds who interact on the basis of mutual respect
(Putnam 2000). The latter are usually seen in a more positive light as they are considered
to contribute to tolerance, overall integration and societal cohesion (Granovetter 1978).
The former on the other hand are looked upon with much more ambivalence: bonding
6
forms may help minority groups in finding their way in the wider society but they may
also enhance ethnocentrism, oppose society and fuel intercommunity distrust and
hostility. Examples of this divisive form of bonding social capital are abundant and not
just restricted to the extreme groups mentioned above. It suffices to refer to the religious
communities in Northern Ireland and in Lebanon and the ethnic communities in Bosnia
and in Sri Lanka to show that even more moderate forms of exclusive bonding can have
disastrous effects for society at large (Green et al 2006).
Clearly, it was fear of the divisive variety of bonding social capital that has
motivated the authors of the aforementioned Cantle report to advocate ethnic mixing.
This makes the distinction between bonding and bridging social capital highly relevant
for the current study. Is there a tension between bonding and bridging social capital as the
Cantle report implicitly implies, and are schools with a mixed ethnic intake therefore
undermining bonding forms but fostering bridging forms? Or is diversity affecting both
forms of social capital, as Putnam’s study shows? Or is diversity connected in completely
unexpected ways to bonding and bridging forms of social capital? These are the key
questions we will address in the empirical section.
The attentive reader might ask why we focus on Putnam’s conception of social
capital when there is literature relating the concept specifically to youngsters, which is
after all the target group of this study. Coleman (1988), for instance, argues that social
capital as manifested in the family and in the immediate environment of children, i.e.
micro forms of social capital, are particularly important for the creation of human capital
and school performance of youngsters. In his view, a crucial property of this environment
is the degree of intergenerational closure of networks of parents and children: the better
7
parents know the parents of their children’s friends, the more likely they are to develop
mutually agreed norms and sanctions regulating their children’s behavior and
contributing to their academic achievements. Coleman’s conception of social capital,
however, is incapable of addressing issues of inter-community trust, solidarity and selforganisation, which is the key concern of the Cantle report. Indeed, it is entirely
imaginable that multi-ethnic communities display both high levels of intergenerational
closure within each group (i.e. high levels of bonding) and high levels of inter-group
hostility (i.e. low levels of bridging) simultaneously. For this reason we focus on
Putnam’s bonding and bridging forms of social capital and disregard scholars who
understand social capital as an individual or micro-level property (e.g. Bourdieu (1986)
who considers social capital to be a resource possessed and exploited by individuals).
Another reason to embrace Putnam’s conception of social capital is the growing
body of research claiming that its key components, trust, tolerance and participation, are
shaped in one’s formative years and will change little thereafter (Stolle and Hooghe
2004; Flanagan and Sherrod 1998). It is thus highly relevant to explore the conditions
affecting the acquisition of these attitudes and behaviors by adolescents since this is
precisely the age group in which these outcomes take definite shape.
The diversity perspective
At its core the diversity perspective argues that cultural similarity enhances trust,
solidarity and cooperation. While some scholars seem to accept this claim as a given fact
8
(e.g. Alesina and La Ferrara (2002: 208), who argue that people have “a natural aversion
to heterogeneity”), others have sought to explain the relation theoretically. Conflict
theorists for instance assert that it is the competition over scarce resources that fuels intragroup solidarity and inter-group hostility. The more often people encounter members of
ethnic out-groups in their daily lives and the larger the size of these out-groups, the
tighter their in-group bonding and stronger their fear of ethnic others (Bobo 1999;
Quinlan 1995). From a slightly different viewpoint, evolutionary theorists have also
pointed to the mechanism of group competition. Thus Salter (2004) contends that the
current propensity of people to bond with ethnic kin and be distrustful of ethnic others is
the result of a long historical process in which clans and tribes with internal mutual
support schemes have outperformed groups lacking these support systems in the group
struggle for survival. In this perspective, multiethnic societies will continue to be troubled
by ethnic conflict, ethnic nepotism and faulty welfare systems.
However the diversity argument is elaborated theoretically, its advocates have
marshaled an impressive amount of research evidence in support of their claims. Most of
this research relates to the United States and Canada, where a series of studies have found
a negative relation between ethnic or racial heterogeneity on the one hand and trust,
cooperation and solidarity on the other at the city or state level (e.g. Alesina, Baqir and
Easterly 1997; Hero and Tolbert 1996; Luttmer 2001; Soroka, Johnston and Banting
2004). Combining tract level data from the census and public opinion data from the
General Social Survey, Luttmer, for instance, discovered that white support for welfare
spending diminishes as the proportion of black recipients of welfare in the tract
population increases. This result indicates that racial heterogeneity seems to be
9
particularly harmful for social solidarity if racial cleavages coincide with social
inequalities. Focusing on Canada, Soroka, Johnston and Banting (2004) established that
interpersonal trust diminishes as the proportion of visible minorities in census tracts
increases, and that trust in turn is positively linked to pro-welfare attitudes.
The aforementioned study by Putnam (2007) is the latest in this string of studies.
Controlling for a number of individual and contextual conditions, he found that diversity
does not only reduce both in- and out-group trust, but is also showing a negative link with
other civic attitudes such as cooperation, altruism, political efficacy and confidence in
local institutions. Putnam believes though that this negative impact of diversity is likely
to be only temporary. In the long run, “successful immigrant societies create new forms
of social solidarity and dampen the negative effects of diversity by constructing new,
more encompassing identities” (ibid. pp. 138,139) He explicitly notes that ethnic and
racial identities are dynamic, socially constructed phenomena and that therefore the
substance of diversity can change with some cleavages becoming less and others more
salient over time.
Research highlighting a negative link between diversity and trust is
counterbalanced however by studies finding no effect for diversity. In her study of formal
and informal social capital in 839 British neighbourhoods, Letki (2008), for instance,
found that the socio-economic status of a neighbourhood was the most important driver
of social capital, while its ethno-racial composition hardly mattered. Oliver and Wong
(2003) even found a positive relation between community heterogeneity and favorable
attitudes towards out-groups. People living in homogenous areas turned out to have
stronger ethnic stereotypes and to be more suspicious of ethnic others. Tolsma et al
10
(2008) observe that ethnic diversity can be related in completely different ways to various
components of social cohesion. In their study of 503 neighbourhoods and 245
municipalities in the Netherlands, they found that ethnic diversity is not conducive to
volunteering and the frequency of contacts with neighbours, but contributes positively to
ethnic tolerance and shows no relation with generalized trust. Summarizing this
contradictory evidence, we can conclude that the nature of the link between diversity and
social capital seems to vary across different components of social capital and different
countries and to depend on the number and kind of control variables included in the
analysis. The review thus only adds weight to the concern raised above that social capital
encompasses a collection of highly disparate notions.
Remarkably, the education literature seems not to have picked up on the explosion
of political science studies suggesting a negative link between diversity and social
capital. Traditionally, educationalists have been more concerned with the effects of ethnic
and racial segregation on student performance (e.g. Orfield 1978; Rumberger and Willms
1992). Yet, there is a distinct tradition within the field of education examining the
consequences of (de)segregation for inter-racial friendships, inter-cultural understanding
and comfort in dealing with multi-cultural settings. Recent studies in the US by
Frankenberg et al (2003) and Holme et al (2005), for instance, found that the experience
of racially mixed schools left graduates with a better understanding of different cultures
and an “increased sense of comfort in interracial settings” (ibid p. 14). Research by
Ellison and Powers (1994) and Sigelman et al (1996), moreover, shows that the tolerant
attitudes and interracial friendships developed in racially integrated schools persist into
adulthood. Holme et al (2005) further claim that the daily experience of interracial
11
schooling is much more effective in this regard than multicultural curricula or student
exchange programs. Bruegel (2006), investigating inter-ethnic frienships among pupils of
12 primary schools in London and Birmingham, reaches similar conclusions. In her view,
“the day-to-day contact between children [of different ethnic background, XX] has far
more chance of breaking down barriers between communities, than school twinning and
sporting encounters” (ibid. p. 2). Given her positive appraisal of racially mixed schools,
she is skeptical of policies promoting school choice as these might have the unintended
effect of promoting segregation. Other research in the UK focusing on community
relations in Northern Ireland has argued that integrated (i.e. mixed faith) schools “impact
positively on identity, outgroup attitudes, forgiveness and reconciliation” (McGlynn et al,
2004: 1). All these studies can thus be said to strongly refute the aforementioned conflict
perspective: daily contact between people of different ethnic or racial background does
not contribute to interethnic hostility but to its opposite: inter-ethnic understanding and
trust, in short to bridging social capital
Yet, not all educational research points in this direction. In fact, a thorough review
of the literature on the effects of school desegregation observed that the extant research
was strikingly inconsistent in its findings (Schofield 2001). While many studies indeed
point to the positive effects of ethnic mixing for out-group attitudes, others suggest the
opposite or claim there is no effect, and again others argue that the effects are different
for majority and minority groups.
Our analyses will allow us to explore all these
possibilities for both bonding and bridging social capital.
12
Data, indicators and method
We explore the relationships between diversity and social capital by analyzing data of the
IEA Civic Education Study (Cived) (Torney-Purta et al 2001). This study consisted of a
large scale survey conducted in April 1999 among a sample of 90,000 14-year-olds in 28
countries worldwide. To this day, the Cived study has not enjoyed the same level of
popularity as other large international surveys addressing civic values, such as the World
Values Survey, the ISSP and the Eurobarometer. This is somewhat surprising given the
quality of the data. Not only are the national samples much larger in the Cived study
(around 3000 respondents in each country), the non-response is also significantly lower
than in the other surveys. One of the advantages is that respondents of immigrant origin
are represented to a sufficient degree (the share of these minorities ranges between seven
to twenty per cent of the national samples of a number of West-European states). Given
the nested character of the national samples, with one class being selected in 120-200
sampled schools in each participating country, the Cived study further allows researchers
to explore both contextual effects (such as diversity) and individual-level factors. We
selected the national sample of England, which is composed of 3043 students selected in
128 schools (i.e. classes).
Social capital
13
Ideally, the bonding and bridging forms of social capital are explored with measures
reflecting in- and out-group trust, solidarity and cooperation. Unfortunately, apart from
two items on participation in an ethnicity or religion-based organizations, the Cived
questionnaire does not have questions capturing the ethnic in/out-group notion. It does
however include items covering the different scales at which the bonding and bridging
forms can be said to operate. While bonding social capital is clearly a micro-level
phenomenon reflecting close contacts with family, friends, classmates and ethnic kin,
bridging social capital refers to the often infrequent ties that bind people of different
backgrounds together at various levels, micro, meso and macro. The latter moreover can
be said to include notions of tolerance and respect for people who are culturally or
ideologically different. In line with these definitions, we devised one measure reflecting
the bonding form and three measures reflecting the bridging form of social capital:
Bonding
-
Bridging
Participation in ethnic and religious
- Participation in human rights and
organizations
environmental organizations
- Generalized trust
- Ethnic tolerance
The measure for bonding social capital was tapped with the item “have you participated
in the following organizations? (1) a cultural association based on ethnicity; (2) an
organization sponsored by a religious group”. Based on the answers to this item, we
14
created a binary variable with values 0 [no participation] and 1 [participated in one or
more organizations].
We did likewise for participation in human rights and environmental
organizations, which we considered to reflect bridging social capital. Although this
measure does not capture the in/out-group dimension, it does nicely represent the broad,
outward-looking forms of association said to be typical of the bridging variety. Moreover,
according to Hooghe (2003) an organization’s ideology is more important than the ethnic
or social make up of its member base for the promulgation of values like tolerance and
intercultural understanding. Analyzing survey data of the adult population in Flanders,
Belgium, he found that membership of environmental and human rights organizations
was particularly negatively related with ethnocentrism (i.e. the counterpart of tolerance),
controlling for many background variables including education.
Generalized trust was tapped with an item asking respondents how much of the
time they trusted the people “who live in this country” <categories: never – only some of
the time – most of the time – always>. Because of the explicit reference to the national
scale in this item we considered it to reflect bridging social capital. The bridging nature
of this item is moreover supported by Uslaner (2000: 575), who found generalized trust
to be closely linked to trust in strangers.
We further used a ready-made scale in the Cived database as a measure of ethnic
tolerance, our third indicator of bridging social capital. The scale clusters the following
five items on immigrants and is internally consistent with an alpha reliability of .82
(Torney-Purta et al 2001, 208):
(1) Immigrants should have the opportunity to keep their own language;
15
(2) Immigrants’ children should have the same opportunities for education that other
children in the country have;
(3) Immigrants who live in a country for several years should have the opportunity to
vote in elections;
(4) Immigrants should have the opportunity to keep their own customs and lifestyle;
(5) Immigrants should have all the same rights that everyone else in a country has.
Categories: <strongly disagree – disagree – agree – strongly agree>
These items, it must be noted, seem to reflect primarily accommodating views on
immigrants rather than ethnic tolerance. However, Ford (2008) showed that such views
are strongly linked to ethnic tolerance (as measured, in his research, by attitudes on social
contact with ethnic minorities at work or in the family). Pettigrew (1997) moreover found
these views to correspond in the same way as ethnic tolerance to a number of explanatory
conditions including intergroup contact. Theoretically it is also highly plausible that the
two are intimately related. Expressing disagreement with the five statements implies
privileging the native majority over immigrants, a mindset which intuitively goes
together with ethnocentrism and prejudice – the very antonyms of ethnic tolerance. For
these reasons we assumed the five-item scale to be a good proxy of ethnic tolerance. The
higher the values on this scale, the more the respondent agrees with the five statements
and the more tolerant we consider him/her to be.
16
Independent variables
We collected the answers to the question “which best describes you”1 to calculate the
proportion of pupils not identifying as white, and used this proportion as a class-level
measure of ethnoracial diversity, our main variable of interest (henceforth simply called
‘diversity’). Properly speaking this measure refers to density, which does not necessarily
correspond to diversity. Density, for instance, is high and diversity low in situations
where a single ethnic minority group makes up the majority of the class population.
However, having carefully examined the data, we found that classes with high ethnic
densities were also relatively diverse in terms of the number of children of different
ethnic groups. For this reason we considered this measure of density to be a good proxy
of diversity. Moreover, density measures have the distinct advantage of not being colour
blind like the more traditional measure of diversity, the Herfindahl Index of
Fractionalization (Tolsma et al 2008). Unlike the latter, density measures are able to
distinguish a situation of an 80% native majority and a 20% ethnic minority from its
mirror image (80 % ethnic minority and 20 % native majority). Being able to distinguish
between the two situations obviously matters for West-European countries because
differences between the ethnic majority and ethnic minorities are accentuated by gaps in
socio-economic status.
In subsequent analyses we will explore the effect of diversity controlling for a
number of individual and class-level conditions. The individual level conditions are: (1)
1
The answer categories of this question are: (1) White; (2) Black Caribbean; (3) Black African,; (4) Black
other; (5) Indian; (6) Pakistani; (7) Chinese; (8) Bangladeshi, (9) Other
17
gender [0 – girl; 1 – boy]; (2) Social status [scale with six values] (based on the item
‘number of books at home’; this item is strongly correlated with ‘education mother’ and
‘education father’; unlike Hooghe et al (2007) we chose not to create a composite index
combining all three items because of high numbers of missing values on the education
items); (3) civic competence (a ready-made composite measure based on the results of a
civic knowledge and skills test); (4) ethnoracial identity [0 – white; 1 – non-white] (based
on the “which best describes you” item). The importance of each of these conditions in
shaping different components of social capital has been amply demonstrated in the
literature: on the effect of gender, see Verba, Brady and Schlozman (1995) and Hooghe
and Stolle (2004); on that of social status and educational attainment in particular, see
Dalton (2004), Nie, Junn and Stehlik-Barry (2004) and Hagendoorn (1999); on that of
civic knowledge and skills, see Galston (2001) and Delli, Carpini and Keeter (1996); on
that of ethnic background, particularly of a non-western kind, see Rice and Feldman
(1997).
The inclusion of ethnoracial identity enables us to assess whether diversity
represents a true contextual effect exerting an independent influence on the dependent
variables or whether it is merely a compositional effect reflecting no more than the sum
of individual differences. A class-level condition is a true contextual effect if the social
capital levels of all students in that class are affected by this condition. The condition is
only a compositional effect if it no longer exerts an independent effect on social capital
once it is controlled for its individual level equivalent. For example, if differences in
social capital are solely a function of individual ethnoracial identity, then the diversity of
18
a class is nothing more than a compositional effect. If diversity affects all students in that
class, in addition to the effect of ethnoracial identity, then it is a contextual effect.
We used two class-level conditions as control variables. The first of these –
classroom climate – is the class average of a ready-made scale in the database labeled as
‘an open climate for classroom discussion’. Previous research by Torney-Purta (2002,
2004) on the same dataset has shown that this variable is strongly correlated to various
components of social capital. The second is class status, which is the class average of the
aforementioned individual-level social status. Many studies have pointed to the
importance of this contextual condition for a range of social outcomes. As noted before,
Letki (2008) found low neighbourhood status to be particularly harmful for both formal
and informal forms of social capital. In similar vein, Oliver and Mandelberg (2000) note
that residents in low status neighbourhoods are often exposed to crime, decay and
disorder, leading them to develop feelings of anxiety, alienation, and suspicion towards
strangers.
Table 1 provides the descriptives of all variables. The distribution of scores on the
trust variable (‘never’ – 5.1%; ‘only some of the time’ - 29.5%; ‘most of the time’ –
36.5%; ‘always’ – 12.6%) appears to approximate a normal distribution, which means
that it can be analyzed as a continuous variable in a linear regression model. The ethnic
tolerance scale can likewise be treated as a continuous variable. The scores on the other
two dependent variables (the two participation measures) very much lean towards nonparticipation
(85.1%
and
85.3%
not
participating
in
religious/ethnic
and
environmental/human rights organizations, respectively). We treat these measures as
binary variables and will consequently analyze them in logistic regression models.
19
Among the independent variables we find that ethnoracial diversity is highly skewed
towards the homogenous end, the average share of non-white students being only 12.7%.
Unsurprisingly, the variable on which diversity is based, ethnoracial identity, is tilted in a
similar manner with a mere 12.6% not identifying as white.
Table 1 about here
We further note that the strength of the correlations among the contextual variables is not
such that there is a risk of multicollinearity in subsequent analyses (these correlations are:
-.03 between diversity and class status; .14** between diversity and classroom climate;
.36** between class status and classroom climate). Remarkably, ethnoracial diversity and
class status are only weakly correlated, which runs counter to the common perception that
diversity is closely linked to deprivation.
Finally, we examine the internal consistency of social capital and its bonding and
bridging varieties. Table 2 presents the bivariate correlations among and between the
three measures of bridging and the one measure of bonding social capital. It turns out that
our aforementioned skepticism towards the concept is more than warranted: we see that
the three indicators of bridging social capital are strikingly uncorrelated. In other words,
generalized trust, participation in inclusive organizations and ethnic tolerance do not
necessarily go together. By contrast, the two participation measures, although tapping
different varieties of social capital, are strongly correlated, blurring the difference
between bonding and bridging. The only relation supporting the notion that there is
20
tension between the two forms of social capital is the negative correlation between
generalized trust and participation in ethnic/religious organizations.
Table 2 about here
What the pattern of correlations above all shows is the autonomous nature of the two
attitudinal measures vis-à-vis each other and vis-à-vis the two participation measures.
This does not only undermine the distinction between bonding and bridging forms of
social capital but also the validity of the concept of social capital itself. Our findings thus
strongly contrast with those of Brehm and Rahn, who, as noted before, did find a
cohesive social capital syndrome of attitudes and behaviors at the individual level.
Because our indicators neither cluster neatly in a bridging dimension of social capital nor
in an overall syndrome of social capital, we will explore them individually in the ensuing
analyses. We would like to emphasize that our continued use of the terms bonding and
bridging does not suggest that we hold these theoretical concepts to refer to welldemarcated empirical phenomena.
Method of analysis
Since our independent variables are pitched at two levels (class and individual) and our
dependent variables are at the individual level, the appropriate method to explore the
relationships between diversity and social capital is a multi-level analysis. This is all the
more required given the nested structure of the data. A structure of this kind, with
21
students being nested in classes, classes in schools, and schools in countries, precludes
the use of more conventional multiple regression techniques since these require that
observations are independent. Using such techniques to analyze nested data would result
in an underestimation of the standard errors of the contextual variables (and therefore an
overestimation of the effects of these variables). Aggregating the dependent variables to
the level of the independent contextual variables and performing a conventional
regression analysis at that level is not a solution either as this makes it impossible among
the independent variables to distinguish contextual effects from effects resulting from the
aggregation of individual characteristics (i.e. composition effects) (Hooghe et al 2007;
Snijders and Bosker 1999).
We used Mlwin software to analyze a two level model consisting of classes (level
2) and students (level 1) with ethnoracial diversity, class status and classroom climate
entered as class-level variables and gender, social status, civic competence and
ethnoracial identity entered as individual-level variables. We first explored whether the
effects of the individual-level variables interacted with the contextual variables. This
possibility should certainly not be ruled out since there are studies demonstrating that the
effect of ethnoracial identity on tolerance changes along with the ethnic composition of
the school or neighbourhood. Researching racial prejudice in the American South, Glaser
(1994) for instance shows that racial hostility among respondents identifying as white
increases the more racially diverse the area they live in is. By contrast, and more relevant
for the current paper, Billings and Holden (2007) found ideas of racial superiority among
white 15-year olds in Burnley to be particularly strong in homogenously white schools.
22
However, entering interaction terms of diversity x identity and diversity x social
status in the models, we found no evidence of interaction effects (results can be obtained
from the author). . In other words, ethnoracial identity and social status were correlated
in more or less the same way to the four social capital outcomes across different levels of
diversity. We therefore decided to employ relatively straightforward random intercept
models consisting only of main effects to examine the relations of interest. These models
assume individual-level effects to be constant across classes.
Results
We report on the results in a stepwise fashion. First we present the results of the zero
model, which provides an estimate of the variance in our outcome measures at the class
(L2) and individual (L1) levels (see the columns marked with 0 in Table 3). We then
report on models including only diversity as explanatory variable (Columns I).
Subsequently we present the results of models including the three contextual variables
(Columns II). Finally, we report on models containing all explanatory variables (Columns
III). This procedure allows us to assess (1) whether the variance at the class level is large
enough to warrant multilevel analysis, (2) whether ethnic diversity constitutes a true
contextual or merely a compositional effect, and (3) how much the variance is reduced
after the inclusion of more variables in the models.
Table 3 about here
23
The zero models show that the class level captures 1.7% and 11.2% of the total variance
in generalized trust and ethnic tolerance, respectively (as indicated by the Intraclass
Correlation Coefficients (ICC), which represent the proportion of the total variance in the
outcome measures accounted for by all observed and unobserved factors operating at a
distinct level). According to Duncan and Raudenbusch’s (1999) rule of thumb, these
percentages represent small/medium and very large effect sizes respectively.
Consequently, while the application of multilevel analysis is of marginal utility for trust,
it is a must for ethnic tolerance. ICCs could not be computed for the other participation
outcomes since these are explored using logistic regression. Subsequent analyses will
show, however, that the contextual variables have quite a substantial effect on these
outcomes, thus justifying the use of multilevel analysis.
Examining the effect of diversity without any of the control variables (Model I),
we see that diversity is related in quite different ways to the four social capital indicators.
While diversity is negatively linked with generalized trust, it shows a positive correlation
with ethnic tolerance (though not significant) and the two participation measures. This
pattern of links, moreover, holds when we control for class status and classroom climate,
the other two contextual variables (Model II; note that the link with ethnic tolerance
becomes significant). Thus, unlike Letki (2008) we do not find social status to be the
most important factor at the group level overwhelming the impact of ethnic diversity.
More generally, it can be seen that the effect of diversity is not consistent across the three
indicators of bridging social capital, adding further weight to our observation in the
previous section that there is little empirical support for distinguishing between bonding
24
and bridging forms of social capital. We further note that these results so far are
consistent with other studies finding a negative relation between diversity and trust at the
aggregate level (e.g Pennant 2005; Soroka et al 2004; Delhey and Newton 2005).
Moreover, Putnam (2007) also found ethnic diversity to be negatively related to trust and
positively related to alternative forms of political participation across neighborhoods in
the US.
Will these relations hold, however, once we start controlling for individual level
variables? (Model III). We see a marked difference arising between the attitudinal and
behavioral outcomes. While ethnic diversity no longer shows a significant relation with
trust and tolerance, it retains its positive link with each of the two participation measures.
The effect of ethnic diversity is thus spurious with regard to the two attitudinal outcomes,
reflecting merely the sum of the individual-level effects. In other words, it represents a
compositional and not a true contextual effect for these outcomes.
Among the individual-level controls, ethno-racial identity emerges as a
particularly strong condition affecting trust and tolerance in contrasting ways: non-whites
are significantly less trusting and significantly more tolerant than whites. As the ethnic
tolerance measure reflects attitudes on immigrants it is not surprising to find non-whites
showing higher levels of tolerance. These higher levels are likely to reflect an awareness
among minority students that they are themselves (descendents of) migrants and are seen
as such by the dominant group. The non-white students may in other words have
identified with immigrants. Having restrictive opinions on immigrants as a non-white
would thus entail agreeing to be placed in a subordinate position with respect to the
ethnic majority, which, understandably, few minority students would find appealing. In
25
this sense, our ethnic tolerance measure is likely to have only tapped tolerance levels
among whites.
The negative link between minority identity and trust is more puzzling, all the
more so since it has been controlled for gender, social status and civic competence.
Possibly, it can be explained by the specific wording of the item on trust. Students may
have understood the words “the people who live in this country” as referring to the native
majority. If so, the trust item has actually functioned as a measure of in-group trust for
white students and of out-group trust for non-white students. However, if it has been
interpreted this way, then this interpretation must have been unique to Britain because
Janmaat (2008), using the same data set, has not found a similar negative relation
between minority identity and generalized trust in several other West-European states
with large immigrant populations.
Why are the attitudinal outcomes so unrelated to ethnic diversity once we control
for individual-level conditions? We can only speculate about the reasons. Possibly,
youngsters have become so much used to the presence of ethnic minorities in the media
or to direct contact with cultural others in their neighbourhood that the ethnic
composition of the class or school matters less than it used to. Indeed, in Ford’s (2008)
view, the daily exposure to black and Asian Britons on the television and in other
environments is one of the principle factors explaining the steady decline in racial
prejudice among the native majority in Britain. Alternatively, schools’ attempts to
encourage independent thinking or the process of individualization more generally may
have caused the opinions of individual students to be less guided by those of their
26
classmates than before, thus undermining the impact of contextual conditions such as
ethnic diversity.
The positive link of ethnic diversity with the two participation outcomes is no less
difficult to interpret. After all, with participation in ethnic and religious organizations
reflecting bonding social capital and participation in environmental and human rights
organizations representing bridging social capital, these findings are neither in line with
the contact nor with the conflict perspective. Both perspectives assume the two forms of
social capital to be mutually exclusive, but the former expects ethnic diversity to be
positively linked to bridging and negatively linked to bonding social capital while the
latter expects the very opposite pattern of relationships. Moreover, the findings contrast
totally with Putnam’s constrict perspective which anticipates a negative effect of
diversity on both forms of social capital.
What could explain the positive relation of diversity with participation in
environmental and human rights organizations? Again we cannot do more than suggest
possible causal mechanisms. Perhaps the experience of being in a diverse class and
learning about other cultures triggers an individual pupil’s interest in and sense of
involvement with broader issues, which then results in membership of the named
organizations. This mechanism, obviously, would be in line with contact theory. Perhaps
the initiative comes from the school and it is the relatively diverse schools which invest
more time and effort in establishing links with the named organizations than the
homogenous schools. Finally, the positive relation could be the result of selection.
Students participating in these organizations may have parents who value diversity (or do
not object to it) and send their children to ethnically mixed schools (or keep them in these
27
schools), accordingly. We could likewise propose mechanisms linking ethnic diversity to
participation in ethnic and religious organizations However, because of the crosssectional nature of the Cived data, we cannot explore all these possibilities.
Whatever the precise mechanisms linking diversity to the two participation
outcomes, our main finding is that diversity relates differently to the attitudinal and
behavioral components of social capital. This is another sign that not only the bonding
and bridging varieties but also the concept of social capital itself need to be reevaluated.
After all, the core assumption of social capital theory, that participation automatically
generates a specific set of attitudes, trust and tolerance including, is not supported by our
findings, neither those pertaining to the interrelations among the social capital indicators
nor those relating to the drivers of social capital outcomes. Thus, while our findings may
be welcome news for those convinced that ethnic mixing is conducive for participation
and engagement, they simultaneously question the assumption that participation has
wider benefits for social cohesion.
Concluding remarks
Does ethno-cultural diversity in the classroom help in creating bridging social capital?
This paper revealed that the answer to this question very much depends on the component
of bridging social capital under investigation. Controlling for various conditions at the
individual and class level, ethno-racial diversity showed no relation to attitudes like
generalized trust and ethnic tolerance while it is positively related to participation in
28
environmental and human rights organizations. Thus, at least for the behavioral
component of bridging social capital this study supports the contact perspective: ethnic
diversity makes people open up rather than hunker down as Putnam claims. Trust and
tolerance, as the attitudinal component, were mainly shaped by individual-level
conditions, with ethno-racial identity being the most prominent among them. In other
words, the effect of ethno-racial diversity on these attitudes was found to be spurious,
reflecting a mere compositional (i.e. sum of individual-level properties) and not a true
contextual effect. This study has thus demonstrated that it is vital to include individuallevel variables in the analysis when assessing the impact of contextual properties on some
social capital related outcome of interest.
However, a more important finding in our view is the lack of coherence among
the social capital indicators. Participation in environmental and human rights
organizations was found to be uncorrelated with trust and tolerance, the other two
indicators of bridging social capital, while it did show a strong positive link with
participation in ethnic and religious organizations, our indicator of bonding social capital.
Trust and tolerance moreover proved to be unrelated. These results raise serious doubts
about the empirical utility of the concept of social capital and its bonding and bridging
forms, and the study thus adds to a growing body of research critical of these concepts.
The effort to develop inclusive concepts reducing the complexity of social reality is
understandable from the point of view of parsimony but this should not result in concepts
that are as multidimensional and complex as the reality they seek to simplify. If reality
resists parsimonious descriptions it is better to acknowledge its complexity and act
accordingly. In the case of social capital this would mean focusing on its individual
29
components: trust, tolerance and participation. The continued use of multidimensional
terms like social capital is even harmful, we would argue, because it might give policy
makers the false impression that measures can be devised that foster a range of social
capital qualities all at once.
Our study is limited in three important ways however. First, although our
indicators of bonding and bridging have nicely tapped the scope of both kinds of social
capital, they could only partially address the crucial issue of within (i.e. bonding) and
between (i.e. bridging) group cohesion. It is clearly the in/out group dimension which is
of most concern to policy makers. It is vital that future survey studies such as the
International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS – the successor of the IEA
Cived study) include items on in- and out-group trust, solidarity and cooperation. Second,
due to the single point in time character of the data source, it was impossible to determine
the direction of causation or to explore the causal mechanisms linking (or not linking)
ethnic diversity to the four social capital outcomes. Finally, the Cived study’s restriction
to a single age group invalidated an assessment of age, cohort and period effects,
meaning that we could not explore the stability of behaviors and attitudes acquired during
adolescence. Although, as noted previously, there are several studies suggesting that civic
attitudes and behaviors obtained in one’s formative years are relatively enduring, there is
no consensus on this issue. A longitudinal research design involving parallel panels or
repeated cross-sections of multiple age groups would be able to address these limitations.
30
Literature
Alesina, A., R. Baqir, and W. Easterly (1997). Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions. NBER
Working Paper no. 6009. Cambridge, MA: NBER.
Alesina, A. and La Ferrara, E. (2002). ‘Who Trusts Others’. Journal of Public
Economics, 85 (2), 207-234.
Billings, A. and A. Holden (2007). Interfaith Interventions and Cohesive Communities:
The Effectiveness of Interfaith Activity in Towns Marked by Enclavisation and
Parallel Lives (report prepared for the Home Office).
Bobo, L.D. (1999). ‘Prejudice as Group Position: Microfoundations of a Sociological
Approach to Racism and Race Relations’, Journal of Social Issues 55, 445-72.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). ‘The Forms of Social Capital’, in J. Richardson (ed.), Handbook of
Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, pp. 214-58.
Brehm, J. and Rahn, W. (1997). ‘Individual-level evidence for the causes and
consequences of social capital’, American Journal of Political Science, 41 (3), 9991023.
Bruegel, I. (2006). ‘Social Capital, Diversity and Education Policy’. Paper for Families
and Social Capital ESRC Research Group. http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/families/publications/SCDiversityEdu28.8.06.pdf. Accessed on 3 June 2008.
31
Cantle, T. (2001). Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team
Chaired by Ted Cantle. http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2001/12/11/communitycohesionreport.pdf. Accessed on 2 June 2008.
Coleman, J. (1988). ‘Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital’. The American
Journal of Sociology, Vol 94 supplement, S95-S120.
Dalton, Russell J. 2004. Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices: The Erosion of
Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Delhey, J. and K. Newton (2005). Predicting Cross-National Levels of Social Trust.
Global Pattern or Nordic Exceptionalism? European Sociological Review, 21, 4,
311-327.
Delli Carpini, M.X. and Keeter, S. (1996). What Americans Know about Politics and
Why it Matters. New Haven: Yale UP.
Duncan, G.J. and S.W. Raudenbusch (1999). ‘Assessing the Effects of Context in Studies
of Child and Youth Development’. Educational Psychologist, 34, 29-41.
Ellison, C.G. and D.A. Powers (1994). ‘The Contact Hypothesis and Racial Attitudes
among Black Americans’. Social Science Quarterly, 75, 2, 385-400.
Flanagan, C.A. and L.R. Sherrod (1998). ‘Youth Political Development: an Introduction’.
Journal of Social Issues, 54 (3), 447-56.
Ford, R (2008). ‘Is Racial Prejudice Declining in Britain?’ British Journal of Sociology,
Vol 59, No. 4, 609-636.
32
Frankenberg, E., Lee, C. and Orfield, G. (2003). A Multiracial Society with Segregated
Schools: Are We Losing the Dream. Cambridge, MA: The Civil Rights Project,
Harvard University.
Galston, W. (2001). ‘Political Knowledge, Political Engagement and Civic Education’.
Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 4, 217-234.
Glaser, J. (1994). ‘Back to the Black Belt: Racial Environment and White Racial
Attitudes in the South’. Journal of Politics, 56, 21-41.
Granovetter, M. (1978)’ The Strength of Weak Ties’, American Journal of Sociology, 78
(6), 1360-80.
Green, Andy, John Preston and Jan G. Janmaat (2006). Education, Equality and Social
Cohesion: A Comparative Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hagendoorn, L. (1999) ‘Introduction: a model of the effects of education on prejudice
and racism’ in Hagendoorn, L. and Nekuee, S. (eds) Education and Racism: A Cross
National Inventory of Positive Effects of Education on Ethnic Tolerance. Aldershot:
Ashgate, 1-20.
Hall, P. (1999). ‘Social Capital in Britain’, British Journal of Politics, 29, 417-61.
Herbert, I. (2001). ‘”Apartheid” fears over first Muslim secondary school in state sector”,
The Independent, 2 April: 11.
Hero, R. and C. Tolbert (1996). A Racial/Ethnic Diversity Interpretation of Politics and
Policy in the States of the US. American Journal of Political Science, 40, 851-871.
Holme, J., Wells, A., and Revilla, A. (2005). ‘Learning Through Experience: What
Graduates Gained by Attending Desegregated High Schools’. Equity and
Excellence in Education 38; No 1, 14-25.
33
Hooghe, M. (2003). ‘Value Congruence and Convergence within Voluntary Associations:
Ethnocentrism in Belgian Organizations’. Political Behavior, Vol. 25, No. 2, 151175.
Hooghe, Marc, and Stolle, Dietlind (2004). ‘Good Girls go to the Polling Booth, Bad
Boys go Everywhere. Gender Differences in Anticipated Political Participation
Among US 14 Year Olds. Women and Politics, Vol 26, Nos 3-4, 1-23.
Hooghe, M., Reeskens, T., Kavadias, D., Claes, E. (2007). ‘Determinanten van
Burgerschapsvorming bij Jongeren: Een Internationaal Vergelijkend Perspectief naar
Kiesintenties bij 14-Jarigen’, Pedagogische Studiën. Tijdschrift voor Onderwijskunde
en Opvoedkunde, Vol 84, No 4, 259-276.
Janmaat, J.G. (2006). “Civic Culture in Western and Eastern Europe.” European Journal
of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie 47: 363-393.
Janmaat, J.G. (2008) ‘The Civic Attitudes of Ethnic Minority Youth and the Impact of
Citizenship Education’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Vol 34, No 1, pp
27-54.
Letki, N. (2008). ‘Does Diversity Erode Social Cohesion? Social Capital and Race in
British Neighbourhoods’. Political Studies, 21 (1), 109-123.
Luttmer, E. (2001). Group Loyalty and the Taste for Redistribution. Journal of Political
Economy, 109, 3, 500-528.
McGlynn, C., Niens, U., Cairns, E. and Hewstone, M. (2004) 'Moving out of conflict: the
contribution of integrated schools in Northern Ireland to identity, attitudes,
forgiveness and reconciliation', Journal of Peace Education, 1:2, 147 — 163
34
Newton, K. and Norris, P. (2000). ‘Confidence in Public Institutions: Faith, Culture or
Performance?’, in Susan J. Pharr and Robert D. Putnam (eds) Disaffected
Democracies: What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries? Princeton, NJ: Princeton
UP, 52-73.
Nie, Norman H., Junn, Jane, and Stehlik-Barry, Keith (1996). Education and Democratic
Citizenship in America. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Oliver, J.E. and Wong J.(2003). ‘Intergroup Prejudice in Multiethnic Settings’. American
Journal of Political Science, 47 (2003), 567-82.
Oliver, J.E. and Mandelberg, T. (2000). ‘Reconsidering the Environmental Determinants
of White Racial Attitudes’, American Journal of Political Science, 44, 574-89.
Orfield, G. (1978). Must We Bus? Segregated Schools and National Policy. Washington:
Brookings Institution.
Pennant, R. (2005). Diversity, Trust and Community Participation in England. Home
Office
Findings
253,
Research,
Development
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/r253.pdf.
and
Statistics
Directorate.
Accessed on 1 June 2008.
Pettigrew, T.F. (1997). ‘Generalized Intergroup Contact Effects on Prejudice’.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23 (February), 173-85.
Putnam, R. (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Putnam, R. (1995). ‘Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital’. Journal of
Democracy 6 (January): 65-78.
Putnam, R. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.
New York: Simon and Schuster.
35
Putnam, R.D. (2007). E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first
Century, The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture, Scandinavian Political Studies, 30,
2, 137-174.
Quinlan, L. (1995). ‘Prejudice as a Response to Perceived Group Threat: Population
Composition and Anti-Immigrant and Racial Prejudice in Europe’, American
Sociological Review 60, 586-611.
Rice, T. W. and Feldman, J. L. (1997) ‘Civic culture and democracy from Europe to
America’, The Journal of Politics, 59 (4): 1143-72.
Rumberger, R.W. and Willms, J.D. (1992). The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Segregation
on the Achievement Gap in California High Schools. Educational Evaluation and
Policy Analysis, 14 (4), 377-396.
Salter, F. K. (2004). Introduction: The Symposium Target Paper in Broader Context. In
F. K. Salter (Ed.) Welfare, Ethnicity and Altruism: New Findings and Evolutionary
Theory. London: Frank Cass, 3-26.
Schofield, J. W. (2001). ‘Review of Research on School Desegregation’s Impact on
Elementary and Secondary School Students’, in Banks, J.A. and McGee Banks,
C.A. (eds) Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 597-616.
Sigelman, L. and T. Bledsoe, S. Welch, and M.W. Combs (1996). ‘Making Contact?
Black-White Social Interaction in an Urban Setting’. American Journal of
Sociology, 101, 1306-32.
Snijders, T. and Bosker, R.J. (1999). Multilevel Analysis: An Introduction to Basic and
Advanced Multilevel Modelling. London: Sage Publications.
36
Soroka, S. N., R. Johnston, and K. Banting (2004). Ethnicity, Trust and the Welfare State.
In: P. van Parijs (Ed.) Cultural Diversity versus Economic Solidarity. Brussels: De
Boeck, 33-58.
Stolle, D. and Hooghe, M. (2004). ‘The Roots of Social Capital: Attitudinal and Network
Mechanisms in the Relation Between Youth and Adult Indicators of Social Capital’.
Acta Politica, 39, 422-441.
Tolsma, J., van der Meer, T. and Gesthuizen, M. (2008). ‘Unity in Diversity: The Impact
of Neighbourhood and Municipality Characteristics on Dimensions of Social Cohesion
in the Netherlands’. Paper presented at the Politicologenetmaal in Berg en Dal, The
Netherlands, 29-30 May 2008.
Torney-Purta, Lehmann, J. R., Oswald, H. and Schulz, W. (2001) Citizenship Education
in Twenty-eight Countries: Civic Knowledge and Engagement at Age Fourteen.
Amsterdam: The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational
Achievement.
Torney-Purta, J. (2002). ‘The School’s Role in Developing Civic Engagement: A Study
of Adolescents in Twenty-Eight Countries’. Applied Developmental Science, Vol. 6,
203-212.
Torney-Purta, J. (2004). ‘Adolescents’ Political Socialization in Changing Contexts: An
International Study in the Spirit of Nevitt Sanford’. Political Psychology, Vol. 25, No.
3, 465-478.
Uslaner, E.M. (2000). Producing and Consuming Trust. Political Science Quarterly, 115,
569-590.
37
Verba, S., Schlozman, K. L., and Brady, H. (1995). Voice and Equality: Civic
Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
38
Table 1. Descriptive statistics of dependent and independent variables.
Values of categorical
variables
Dependent
Generalized rust
Ethnic Tolerance
Part in eth&reli org
Part in env&hr org
Independent
Ethnoracial diversity
Class status
Classroom climate
Social status
Civic competence
Ethnoracial identity
Gender
Minimum Maximum
1
4.04
No
Yes
No
Yes
Standard
deviation
N
2.68
9.73
.80
2.24
2547
2737
2985
85.1%
14.9%
85.3%
14.7%
2985
0
3.12
7.85
1
40.62
white
non-white
girl
boy
4
14.17
Mean
87.4%
12.6%
50%
50%
94.4
5.87
13.56
6
165.04
12.68
4.40
9.98
4.40
99.40
18.1
.55
.84
1.32
18.86
3043
3043
3014
2982
3013
2972
2957
39
Table 2. Relations between social capital components (bivariate correlations)
Bonding
Part in eth and rel org
Bonding social
capital
Participation in
ethnic and religious
organizations
Bridging social capital
Participation in
environmental and human
rights organizations
Generalized
trust
Ethnic tolerance
-
.34**
-.05*
.02
-
.01
-
-.01
.00
Bridging
Part in env & hr org
Generalized trust
40
41
Table 3. The determinants of social capital (coefficients of multilevel linear and logistic regressions)
Class level (L2)
Ethnoracial diversity
Class status
Climate
Bonding social capital
Participation in ethnic and
religious organizations
I
II
III
.020***
.021***
.605***
.142
Individual level (L1)
Ethnoracial identitya
Social status
Genderb
Civic competence
ICC L2 (%)
ICC L1 (%)
(residual) variance L2
(residual) variance L1
Explained var L2 (%)
Explained var L1 (%)
N L2
N L1
.008*
.453**
.136
Bridging social capital
Generalized trust
Participation in env and
human rights organizations
I
II
III
.013***
.013***
.016
.025
1.23***
.195***
-.167
-.001
0
.010*
-.096
.019
128
2933
128
2933
II
III
-.004**
-.096**
.001
.001
-.064
.007
.224
.165**
-.181
-.003
128
2933
128
2933
0
I
II
III
.007
.009*
-.160
-.209
-.008
-.312
-.287**
-.255***
-.013
.012
-.002*
1.7
98.3
.011
.631
128
2933
I
-.004**
Ethnic tolerance
128
2933
128
2498
.007
.631
36.4
0
128
2498
.004
.631
63.7
0
128
2498
.004
.625
63.7
1
128
2498
1.53***
.081*
-.60***
.011***
11.2
88.8
.574
4.451
128
2688
Note: * P < .05; ** P < .01; *** P < .001; the data were weighted by houseweight to make the results nationally representative
a
Reference category: white
b
Reference category: girl
42
.560
4.449
2.4
0
128
2688
.522
4.448
9.1
0
128
2688
.558
4.140
2.4
7
128
2688