Central Florida Social Capital Study

Robert Putnam’s path-breaking work, Bowling Alone: Collapse and Revival of the American Community, describes how civic ties in American society have weakened over the past several generations. The result in many communities is a shortage of “social capital”, the networks of family, neighbors and friends and the trust and reciprocity that flow from them.
 
Social Capital is a way of conceptualizing or measuring how connected people are to one another. Social Capital is a measure of the health of a community’s social fabric. Social capital exists when people enjoy strong connections to family, friends, neighbors, and civic institutions.

Social Capital is important because it is the glue that binds us together as families, neighborhoods, and communities. Communities with high social capital are communities where people know and take responsibility for one another, are active in civic projects and organizations, and bind themselves together to get things done. When social capital declines, the quality of education is threatened, public safety suffers, philanthropy weakens, economic development lags, and civic institutions become less responsive.

Because so many people currently living in Central Florida have moved here from somewhere else, creating a sense of community here offers challenges that are different from those confronting other places.

The Institute for Social and Behavioral Science at the University of Central Florida will serve as the information-gathering agent for a Social Capital study. Utilizing the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey created by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, they will conduct telephone surveys of 1,400 representative households from Brevard, Lake, Orange, Osceola, Polk, Seminole and Volusia Counties. The collection of data will begin in June and last approximately three months. This study will give an understanding of how people currently residing in Central Florida view community.

After the data is compiled, the partner organizations will share the results with their community board members with the goal of creating a regional action plan to cultivate social capital within Central Florida. A community rollout is planned for early in 2006.

Partners: UCF Metropolitan Center for Regional Studies, Central Florida YMCA, Heart of Florida United Way, myregion.org, Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce, Community Foundation of Central Florida.