Validation Scale for Measuring Social Capital in Higher Education Institutions

The higher education system has caused a great deal of changes in social, economic and political fields. In addition, universities are social systems which have been known as the center of knowledge and information as well as thinking bases for leading societies. In today's complex, competitive world, social capital is considered as a competitive advantage for organizations. The purpose of the present study is to validate a scale for measuring the social capital in universities. The population of the study included all the staffs who were employed in branches of Islamic Azad University in Iran (administrative region 8, 12). The research sample consisted of 595 staffs randomly selected from 6 branches and educational centers using stratified random sampling. The research instrument was Abili and Abilis' (2010) social capital questionnaire which consisted of 24 items with three underlying constructs of cognitive dimension, relational dimension, and structural dimension with Cronbach Alpha of 0.94. The results of factor analysis and principal components analysis, using a varimax rotation, showed that building blocks of social capital includes cognitive (Items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6), relational (Items 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13), and structural (Items 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22. In this study, structural dimension has the highest level of contribution to the formation of social capital in universities. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]