RODERICK A.

ROSE

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

MICHAEL E. WOOLLEY
GARY L. BOWEN

University of Maryland

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Social Capital as a Portfolio of Resources Across

Multiple Microsystems: Implications for
Middle-School Students

Widespread approaches to the conceptualization

and measurement of social capital have been
subjected to critical examination in recent
years; some argue that its meaning and
impact have been diluted. Many authors have
subsequently clarified the concept of social
capital as fungible resources: social norms,
rules, and obligations formed from youths
social networks that provide benefits to youth
that further positive development. Using latent
profile analysis on social capital data gathered
from middle school students, the authors
offer a measurement approach that more
closely reflects this conceptualization by more
effectively accounting for critical information
about the varied sources and the aggregate
effects of those sources of capital. The authors
label the resulting multiple microsystem patterns

School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at

Chapel Hill, 325 Pittsboro Street, Chapel Hill, NC 275993550 (rarose@email.unc.edu).

School of Social Work, 525 West Redwood Street,

Baltimore, MD 21201.
School of Social Work, 325 Pittsboro Street, Chapel Hill,
NC 27599-3550.
Key Words: social capital, education, family school
relations, social support network, at-risk children and
families, latent profile analysis, youth development.

of social capital portfolios, making explicit

the conceptual connection of social capital to
other forms of capital.
Recent research has established that adolescents
social environments characterized by relationships with and among adults and peers who
provide expressive and instrumental resources
promote positive developmental outcomes
(Woolley & Bowen, 2007). The influence of such
beneficial relationships fits within a social capital perspective, in which these social resources
represent investments that can be drawn upon to
achieve desired outcomes (Bordieu, 1986; Dika
& Singh, 2002; Gofen, 2009; Parcel, Dufur, &
Zito, 2010). However, social capital scholarship
has been criticized for (a) lacking conceptual
clarity, (b) being used in ways that have diluted
its meaning and impact, and (c) having low
empirical utility (Brunie, 2009; Glanville &
Bienenstock, 2009; Hayami, 2009; Lillibacka,
2006; Morrow, 1999; Portes, 1998).
Recently, scholars have attempted to address
such critiques, including efforts to (a) place
social capital in context as a form of fungible
investment capital (Hayami, 2009; Parcel et al.,
2010; Portes, 1998), (b) examine the role that
such resources play and the means by which
youth recognize those resources as sources

Family Relations 62 (October 2013): 545 558

DOI:10.1111/fare.12028

545

546

Family Relations

of available social capital (Bordieu, 1986;

Croninger & Lee, 2001; Lillibacka, 2006),
and (c) organize these disparate resources
across microsystems including family, school,
neighborhood, and peer group (Brunie, 2009;
Dika & Singh. 2002; Woolley, Kol, & Bowen,
2009). Emerging from these developments has
been an effort to understand the influence
of multiple sources of social capital on
educational outcomes for youth, which has led
to multidimensional measurement approaches
(Furstenburg & Hughes, 1995; Morrow, 1999).
In light of these important developments,
we propose social capital be viewed and measured as a portfolio of perceived instrumental and expressive resources spanning multiple
microsystems. To that end, we offer a measurement approach that more effectively captures
such patterns of social capital resources within
and between youth microsystems by using a
method known as latent profile analysis (LPA),
which identifies such patterns while preserving
information about the nature and origin of those
resources. We demonstrate this approach using
middle-school student reports of social capital
across home, school, peers, and neighborhood.
The results have potential implications for
informing the intervention and prevention efforts
of school-based practitioners, including the work
of certified family life educators (CFLEs),
school social workers, and school psychologists,
who work with middle-school students and
their families, as well as human development
practitioners who work in practice fields focused
on positive youth development. In a recent
survey of CFLEs (N = 1,218), approximately 1
in 10 respondents (11.4%) reported their primary
practice setting as PreK 12 education (National
Council on Family Relations, 2007). Identifying
patterns of social capital resources across
multiple microsystems, including the family,
is a critical first step in the evidence-based
practice sequence that focuses on promoting
social environments that support the educational
success of middle-school students (Fraser &
Galinsky, 2010).
CONCEPTUALIZING SOCIAL CAPITAL
Colemans (1988) groundbreaking study of
public and parochial schools is a key reference
point for scholarship on social capital, which
Coleman defined as an emergent property of
social networks formed among individual actors.

Coleman adopted Bordieus (1986) perspective

of social capital as fungible and originating at
the group level, while keeping a focus on the
contexts and conditions that characterize the
individuals it may benefit (Portes, 1998).
The application of Colemans (1988)
approach to social capital to inform education
research, policy, and practice has recently been
criticized. First, critics suggest that Colemans
definition itself has led to inherent conceptual
and methodological challenges by conflating the
nature and structure of social networks with the
benefits derived from those networks (Dika &
Singh, 2002). Second, other critics assert scholars have applied the term in ways that have
diluted its meaning and impact (Glanville &
Bienenstock, 2009; Hayami, 2009; Lillibacka,
2006). Third, some suggest that social capital
is simply an alternative way to label singular
sources of social support and lacks empirical
value as a more complex social construct (Lillibacka, 2006).
A number of arguments have consequently
been presented in defense of social capital as an
important construct, addressing these concerns
while asserting clarifications of Colemans
(1988) definition. In response to the first critique,
the first clarification maintains that social capital
is conceptualized specifically as a form of capital
investment (Parcel et al., 2010). Although social
capital is conceptually distinct from monetary
capital, human capital, or cultural capital
(Brunie, 2009; Hayami, 2009), it is equally
important to make explicit that social capital
is nevertheless a store of value to be drawn
upon when needed (Coleman, 1988; Parcel
et al., 2010). In this sense, social capital is
not simply a heuristic research construct but a
social construct emerging from the importance
of capital in modern societies, and it can be seen
as a target or leverage point for education policy
and practice. Importantly, we now know the
necessity of distinguishing social relationships
and networks from the resources and benefits
that such social networks provide (Dika & Singh,
2002; Portes, 1998).
The second clarification involves heterogeneous sources, including combinations of settings and people from which social capital is
drawn. This heterogeneity has been criticized
for contributing to the dilution of the impact
of social capital as a meaningful construct
(Glanville & Bienenstock, 2009). In response
to this second critique, we refer the reader to

Social Capital Portfolios

Colemans original theory. Although Coleman
(1988) was pivotal in proposing that family
social capital is vital in the generation of human
capital, he theorized that social capital resides in
extrafamilial relationships. A growing body of
literature on social capital suggests a strong relationship between youth outcomes and social capital across the four central youth microsystems
including: family (e.g., Crosnoe, 2004), school
(e.g., Rosenfeld, Richman, & Bowen, 2000),
neighborhood (e.g., N. K. Bowen, Bowen, &
Ware, 2002), and peers (e.g., Gerard & Buehler,
2004). Such evidence suggests this heterogeneity does not dilute social capital but, rather,
indicates the importance of multiple sources of
social capital in youth microsystems.
The third clarification pertains to measurement and the empirical utility of social capital.
Consensus is emerging among researchers that
the use of individual actors perceptions of available social resources, measured in the form of
survey self-reports, most closely approximates
the concept of social capital as a facilitating conduit through which individuals may
obtain benefits from networks (Croninger &
Lee, 2001; Glanville & Bienenstock, 2009; Lillibacka, 2006). Self-report tools for obtaining
adolescents experiences of available social capital follow a measurement tradition whereby
latent constructs are conceived of and subsequently measured by inquiring directly with the
actors themselves (Vaquera & Kao, 2008; Woolley et al., 2009). This approach avoids problems
inherent in other measurement strategies, such as
counting the number of relations among actors,
which fail to capture the nature of those relationships. However, as a result, critics assert the
third critiquethat because social capital can
be measured using social supports it has low
empirical utility as a construct in its own right,
and is little more than an alternative way to
label social supports (Lillibacka, 2006). In this
study, we argue that it is the portfolio of these
supports across multiple microsystem domains
that identifies the constellation of supports as
forms of stored capital to be drawn upon, and
we demonstrate a measurement approach, LPA,
that supports this distinction.
Measuring a Portfolio of Social Capital
The sum of this body of research suggests that
the value of these social supports as forms of
capital derives from the constellation of such

547
supports: the organization, various combinations, and singularity of these supports determine how effectively they can be processed
into investments that can be utilized to achieve
objectives (Brunie, 2009; Hayami, 2009). In the
most typical approach to measurement, however,
these factors are overlooked in favor of a variable reduction strategy: social capital spanning
multiple dimensions is typically quantified by
summing items reported by youth respondents,
across or within microsystem domains, using a
simple index or a measurement method such as
factor analysis (e.g., Woolley & Bowen, 2007).
These counting approaches lead to a quantification of social capital as a continuous or count
outcome, rather than a discrete measure of the
typology of different combinations of social capital (Croninger & Lee, 2001; Morrow, 1999;
Reimer, Lyons, Ferguson, & Polanco, 2008).
The result is a measure that contains fewer
dimensions but does not differentiate according to the source or nature of the social capital
(Croninger & Lee, 2001; Reimer et al., 2008),
or differentiates between domains but treats
these domain-specific sources as inherently distinct supports (Wenz-Gross, Siperman, Untch,
& Widaman, 1997; Woolley & Grogan-Kaylor,
2006). However, two youths having similar levels of social capital as represented by a count
may in fact have very distinct portfolios that constitute that capital. The literature indicates that
these differences matter. A portfolio approach
to measurement retains important information
about not only the level of social capital obtained
through a count, but also information about the
source, combination, and pattern of social capital, which is lost in the process of counting.
We suggest that operationalizing and measuring social capital as Coleman (1988) conceived
it requires measures of resources from multiple
sources as well as a method that captures how
those varied sources come together to influence
youth development. A discrete latent construct
of social capital preserves information about the
sources from which the portfolio is constructed;
defining typologies within the student population
represent groups of students that have common
patterns.
Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to
investigate a LPA strategy for measuring social
capital as a capital investment consisting of a
portfolio of multisystem social supports. We
now turn to discuss LPA, a method that has
shown some promise in this regard.

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Family Relations
METHOD

Latent profile analysis (LPA), like latent

class analysis (LCA), enables the estimation
of a discrete typology based on unique
combinations of, in this instance, social capital
resources (Hagenaars & Halman, 1989). In the
present context, LPA uses dimensions from the
microsystem domains of the youth environment
as manifest indicators. An important strength
of LPA lies in its capacity to estimate models
using continuous indicators (LCA models are
estimated using categorical indicators). The
objective is to identify the best-fitting model with
the fewest number of classes (portfolio groups;
Van Lier, Verhulst, & Crijnene, 2003). The
number and structure of the portfolio groups are
determined empirically according to the pattern
of relationships among the dimensions within
and between the individuals represented in the
data. The mean levels of each form of social
capital within each class are then examined
qualitatively to identify and label the pattern
in each group.
Data Source
The data used in this study were obtained
from a quasi-experimental evaluation of 11
middle schools, incorporating a one-group
pretest posttest design of a universal social
intervention to promote middle schools as
learning organizations. The intervention focused
on providing technical assistance to school
administrators and faculty in using the School
Success Profile (SSP, detailed below) data
to plan interventions in response to students
perceptions of their social environments. The
schools entire population, rather than samples
of students within each school, participated such
that the data collected could return information
to school professionals on individual students.
Survey responses from the first (preintervention)
wave were used in this analysis, as they were
unaffected by the treatment.
Data Collection Procedures
In the fall of 2004, we administered the SSP
(Bowen, Rose, & Bowen, 2005), an ecologically
informed school practice assessment instrument
for middle and high school students, to the
population of students enrolled in each of the
selected 11 middle schools. The SSP has 220

multiple-choice items including 22 summary

dimensions and takes up to 60 minutes to
complete. These measures have consistently
demonstrated high levels of reliability and
validity in past research (for a psychometric
evaluation of the SSP, see Bowen et al., 2005).
All data collection procedures were approved
by the university institutional review board
and the principal of each school. Surveys
were administered on a single day in each
school, usually in homeroom classes. English
and Spanish versions were available. Although
encouraged to take the survey, students were
informed they could decline or skip any
questions. Parents also could choose not to have
their child participate, using a passive consent
procedure. Overall response rate was 84%, and
a total of 6,976 surveys were collected.
Sample Characteristics
Thirty percent of students were in sixth grade,
34% in seventh, and 36% in eighth. Forty-seven
percent were African American, 10% Latino,
8% endorsed other race or ethnicity, with
35% White. Fifty-one percent were male, 62%
reported receiving free or reduced price lunch,
and 26% reported having been held back a grade
one or more times.
Measures
The SSP is designed to provide data on different
forms of social capital within and across
multiple microsystems. The SSP measures 14
core dimensions of the social environment along
with eight individual adaptation factors. In this
study, we used five of the social environment
dimensions: family togetherness, parent support,
teacher support, neighbor support, and friend
support. These dimensions are measures of
social capital across these settings in that
they indicate the norms, rules, and obligations
between the student and the persons in each of
the central microsystems. Univariate statistics
for the five social capital dimensions are reported
in Table 1.
Home. Home social capital included two dimensions. Family Togetherness, a seven-item scale,
assessed adolescents perceptions of emotional
connection and bonding within their families and
included such items as support one another
during difficult times and talk openly and

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549

Table 1. Social Capital Dimension and Predictive Validity Univariates

Social capital indicators

Neighbor support
Teacher support
Friend support
Family togetherness
Parent support
Predictive validity outcomes
School engagement
Trouble avoidance
2005 math end-of-grade
2005 reading end-of-grade

Minimum

Maximum

Mean as Proportion
of Maximum

SD

Reliability

0
0
0
0
0

12
11
5
7
6

8.1
8.7
3.2
4.8
3.8

0.68
0.79
0.64
0.69
0.63

3.1
2.8
1.8
2.5
2.3

0.81
0.86
0.86
0.91
0.92

0
0
238
232

8
3
303
286

6.6
1.2
265.9
258.5

0.83
0.40

1.7
1.2
10.1
8.9

0.79
0.78

listen to one another. Parents/guardians and

peers (siblings) were included among members of the family. Parent Support, a six-item
scale, assessed adolescents perceptions of the
emotional support provided by adults in the
household and included items that indicated
whether adults gave the adolescents encouragement and made them feel appreciated.
School. Teacher Support measured encouragement, appreciation, and respect adolescents
experienced from teachers. This 11-item scale
included my teachers praise my efforts when
I work hard and my teachers really listen to
what I have to say.
Neighborhood. Neighbor Support captured students experiences of support in their neighborhood from adults outside the family. A 12-item
scale, with items such as If I had a problem,
there are neighbors who could help me and
Adults in my neighborhood would say something to me if they saw me doing something that
could get me in trouble.
Peers. Friend Support measured the level of
trust and reciprocity embedded in adolescents
peer networks. This five-item scale included
such items as I am able to tell my problems to
my friends and I can count on my friends for
support.
Analysis Strategy
In an LPA model, these five social capital
measures can be thought of as forming a fivedimensional space in which individuals tend to

cluster according to shared patterns among the

five manifest indicators. Maximum likelihood
was used to determine the number of ways in
which the sample tends to cluster (the number
of profiles) and the patterns defining these
clusters (the average scores on the manifest
indicators in each profile). Each of these clusters
represents one of the N latent classes. Thus,
the solution to the LPA model consisted of
the means of each of the manifest indicators
within each portfolio and a set of probabilities
or proportions corresponding to the size of
each portfolio. Because cluster membership
is based on likelihood, portfolios are not
deterministic, and the findings represent the
probability that a student was in any given
cluster. We saved the most likely latent class
membership based on these probabilities for
further analysis of the predictive validity of a
portfolio. We provide comments and caveats
about the use of the predicted probabilities in
the discussion. The means on each manifest
indicator within a portfolio then characterizes
each of the portfolios by providing a facevalid interpretation, which was used to label
each cluster based on that unique pattern.
An important assumption of LPA is that
the indicators are independent, conditional on
class membership. The correlations between the
indicators generally supported this assumption,
with most correlations under .35. Only the
correlation between the two family indicators
(family togetherness and parent support) was
higher, at .62.
Measurement. We first examined the five
dimensions of social capital. Reliabilities of

550
these dimensions ranged from .81 for neighbor
support to .92 for parent support. The range of
each scale varied by the number of items; the
smallest (friend support) had a range of 0 to 5
and the largest had a range of 0 to 12 (neighbor
support). We normed the scales on a 0-to-1
metric such that a 0 indicated having none of
that type of social capital, while a 1 indicated
all of that type. Renorming the scales facilitated
an intuitive interpretation of the results for each
portfolios means on the manifest indicators:
these means now constituted proportions of the
available resources within each social capital
dimension. This is reported in Table 1 in the
column Mean as Proportion. We ran the LPA
on these renormed indicators.
Model Fit and Class Labels. Following Nylund,
Asparouhov, and Muthen (2007), we determined
the most appropriate number of classes in the
LPA model by starting with the minimum
number of classes required (N = 2), then adding
one class at a time while evaluating each
model for improvement in fit, a process that
continued until the addition of an additional
class did not improve model fit. The LoMendell-Rubin (LMR) likelihood ratio test
(Lo, Mendell, & Rubin, 2001) was used to
compare model fit. Other criteria such as
the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and
Bayesian information criterion (BIC), including
a sample adjusted BIC, were considered as well.
Entropy was considered to evaluate the overall
fit of the model to the data. Qualitative factors
were also important, such as the face validity and
conceptual coherence of the classes that emerged
(Nylund et al., 2007). Mplus (Muthen & Muthen,
2004) was used for estimating the models. The
expectation-maximization algorithm was used
to fit the LPA solution.
Predictive validity. To determine the predictive
value of the portfolios identified through LPA,
we conducted a predictive validity analysis
incorporating the portfolios into multilevel
models of student self-reported outcomes and
end-of-grade scores for the same academic
year (2004 2005), with adjusted standard
errors for school nesting using multilevel
modeling (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). All
models were also conditioned on students
race/ethnicity, gender, receipt of free/reduced
price lunch, and past grade retention. We
hypothesized that classes revealed to have

Family Relations
more robust portfolios consisting of higher
proportions of more types of social capital
would have better outcomes. Two school
outcome dimensions from the SSPschool
engagement and trouble avoidanceare selfreports by youth that describe their involvement
and behavior in school. School engagement was
measured using a three-item scale and trouble
avoidance using an eight-item scale. End-ofgrade standardized test performances in math
and reading for school year 2004 2005 derive
from administrative data collected by the North
Carolina Education Data Research Center at
Duke University. Univariate statistics of selfreport and end-of-grade outcomes are reported
in Table 1. To incorporate each students
portfolio, portfolios being probabilistic not
deterministic, we assumed that each student was
best characterized by the portfolio on which he
or she had the highest probability of membership
(a classify-analyze type of post hoc analysis).
Missing data. The percentage of missing data
for each dimension ranged from 3 (peer group
acceptance) to 10 (social support use). Of
the 6,976 students surveyed, 6,914 students
in sixth through eighth grades were retained
for the present analysis; 62 students (less than
1%) did not have valid responses on enough
of the constituent items used in the analysis
and their surveys were consequently discarded.
Mplus implements full information maximum
likelihood (FIML) estimation for missing values.
Although FIML requires an assumption of
missing at random (Schafer 1997), it uses all
available data for each participant, resulting in
no additional loss of cases. Variables used in
the predictive analysis had higher percentages
of missing data. Missing scale score dependent
variables (850 for math and 864 for reading)
were also treated as FIML (Schafer, 1997).
Among the remaining records, 125 students were
missing the free/reduced price lunch indicator,
15 students were missing race/ethnicity, 21
students were missing the retention indicator,
and 3 students were missing gender; a total of
161 (2.3% of sample) records were not used in
the predictive validity analysis as a result.
RESULTS
Number of Portfolios
Starting with two portfolios and working
upwards, we determined that the best-fitting

Social Capital Portfolios

551

Table 2. Latent Profile Analysis: Dimension Proportions by Class

Mean Levels of Support in Each Class
Home
%
High overall
Medium-high overall
Teacher
Extrafamilial adults
All adults
Home
Nonparental
Low home

43
12
9
6
9
4
6
13

Neighbor Support Teacher Support Friend Support Family Togetherness Parent Support
0.78
0.69
0.56
0.60
0.62
0.56
0.66
0.49

0.90
0.82
0.71
0.77
0.78
0.28
0.80
0.61

number of portfolios was eight, which is three

more than the number of manifest indicators. The
fit criteria did not unambiguously identify the
same number of portfolios as most appropriate,
but the results collectively suggested 8 to 10
portfolios. The LMR likelihood ratio test statistic
comparing the eight-portfolio model with the
seven-portfolio model was 369.18 (p < .05),
reflecting a significant improvement in fit over
the seven-portfolio solution. A nine-portfolio
model was tested, and the fit was not significantly
improved with the addition of the ninth portfolio
( 2 = 224.08, p = .17). Alternatively, the AIC
and BIC improved up to a tenth portfolio.
Nylund et al. (2007) suggested that the LMR
performed better than the information criteria.
We considered entropy as an indicator of the
overall fit of the model to the data, and the eightportfolio model had clearly improved fit over the
seven-portfolio model. A slight improvement at
nine classes (.883) over eight classes (.879) was
not enough to merit overlooking the results of
the LMR in favor of a nine-portfolio model.
Class Labels and Face Validity
The eight-portfolio solution had a conceptually
coherent pattern. Two portfolios were characterized by relatively high levels on each dimension
of social capital; five portfolios contained relatively high levels of one or more sources of
adult (neighbor, teacher, or parent) social capital; and one portfolio emerged with relatively
lower levels of all sources (except for teacher)
than in the other portfolios. Portfolios were
labeled descriptively consistent with this pattern. In particular, if one or more dimensions
stood out as uniquely high, the portfolio was

0.77
0.63
0.51
0.56
0.53
0.56
0.63
0.45

0.95
0.82
0.33
0.44
0.35
0.91
0.91
0.08

0.96
0.54
0.39
0.10
0.84
0.94
0.06
0.05

identified by that dimension or combination of

dimensions. Although we labeled three portfolios (the two highest, and the lowest) as high,
medium-high, and low based on their overall pattern, we avoided making portfolio labels based
on cross-portfolio rankings on the dimensions
themselves. Instead, we evaluated how high
each source was relative to the other sources
within that portfolio and framed each portfolio
as an indivisible unit. Thus, the three portfolios
that are labeled as high, medium-high and low
home are conceptually distinct in that, save for
the level of teacher support on the low home
portfolio; the levels observed on each dimension
are similar.
The first portfolio was labeled high overall
because students with this portfolio reported
high levels for each dimension of social capital
(see Table 2). The lowest proportion observed
was 77% for friend support, and the highest was
96% for parent support. The second portfolio,
which we labeled medium-high overall, had
relatively high proportions on all dimensions
(with the lowest being parent support at 54%),
but all lower than for the high overall portfolio.
The third through seventh portfolios were
distinguished by the source and level of adult
and family support, with peer-based supports
remaining largely invariant across the portfolios.
The third portfolio was labeled teacher, with
teacher support at 71%; in this portfolio neighbor and parent support were comparatively low.
The fourth portfolio, labeled extrafamilial adults
(referring to teachers and neighbors), had reasonably high levels of neighbor and teacher support,
but parent support was only 10%, whereas family togetherness was 44%. The fifth portfolio,
all adults (referring to parents, neighbors, and

552

Family Relations

teachers), had high levels of support from parents

(84%), neighbors (62%), and teachers (78%).
The sixth portfolio was labeled home for having
family togetherness at 91% and parent support at
95%; teacher support was relatively low among
the sources of support (28%). The seventh
portfolio was labeled nonparental for having relatively high levels of support among neighbors
(66%), teachers (80%), and peers (friend support
at 63% and family support at 91%). The eighth
and final portfolio was labeled low home. The
home dimensions (family togetherness at 8% and
parent support at 5%) were relatively low; further, neighbor support was at 49%, friend support
was at 45%, and teacher support was at 61%.
Figure 1 graphically depicts the portfolios
and allows for a visual way to compare
and contrast the patterns. The lines between
each data point should not be interpreted
literally as an indication of a linear relationship.
Rather, they should be understood only as a
means of tying together points in a common
portfolio. Several overall observations about
this measurement strategy can be made. First,
the pattern of peer and extrafamilial support
ranges from medium to high levels across the
portfolios, whereas a full range of student
social capital experiences at home emerges.
This does indicate family togetherness and
parental support do characterize social capital
differences across portfolios, however, and that
differences between medium and high resources
from teachers, neighbors, and peers should not
be discounted.
Proportions in Classes
The greatest proportion (43%) of students had
the high overall portfolio. Twelve percent had
medium-high overall; low home constituted
13%. The remaining portfolios were all less
than 10%: less than 9% each for teacher and all
adults; less than 6% each for extrafamilial adults
and nonparental; and less than 4% for home.
Portfolio Predictive Validity Analyses
Based on the descriptions of the portfolios, we
hypothesized the following unique relationships
among the portfolios in their positive associations with students school engagement, trouble
avoidance, and academic performance. First,
high overall should be more promotive than
medium-high overall. Second, these two classes

should be more promotive than the remaining

five moderate portfolios and the low home portfolio. We label such relationships promotive as
this is consistent with theory, though we caution
against using an inference of causality based on
the analysis. To begin, we used high overall as
the reference category, such that all coefficients
were expected to be negative with better portfolios having smaller negative values. Where
necessary, post hoc comparisons of each pair
of portfolios were conducted by rearranging the
reference condition and re-running the model,
but we did not hypothesize the relative effects
of each of the moderate portfolios. Table 3 only
reports the main comparison with high overall
as reference condition.
In regards to school engagement, our
hypotheses were only partially confirmed; those
with high overall, but not medium-high overall,
reported higher engagement than those with
medium-high overall (b = 0.34, p < .001) and
nonparental (b = 0.16, p < .05). Portfolios
with multiple sources of high adult support (such
as nonparental, all adults, and extrafamilial
adults) outperformed those that did not (teacher,
home, and low home) in terms of association
with school engagement. In post hoc comparisons, extrafamilial adults and all adults were
not significantly different; home was not significantly different from teacher and low home; all
other possible differences were significant.
Adolescents with high overall reported better
trouble avoidance than those with mediumhigh overall (b = 0.18, p < .01) and all other
portfolios. Portfolios with multiple sources of
support, including those that were strictly adult
(all adults) or include peer influences, such as
family togetherness (nonparental), outperformed
portfolios with fewer such sources, even if
primarily from adults (post hoc differences
between all adults and extrafamilial adults and
low home were significant, as was the difference
between nonparental and low home). Home was
the worst performing relative to high overall
(b = .90, p < .001), and post-hoc comparisons
showed it was different from all other portfolios
except extrafamilial and low home.
A less uniform pattern emerged for end-ofgrade tests, with only some of the portfolios
being found significant relative to high overall;
these significant findings conform to the
hypothesis that adolescents with high overall
had the highest test scores and supported
the greater nuance obtained from modeling

Social Capital Portfolios

553

FIGURE 1. GRAPHIC DEPICTION OF SOCIAL CAPITAL PORTFOLIOS.

High

Levels of Social Capital

HO
H
NP
MHO

HO
H
AA

Medium

MHO

EFA

AA
T

EFA
NP
LH

LH

Parent Support

Family Togetherness

Low

HO
MHO
NP
AA
EFA
T

HO
MHO
NP

HO
MHO
NP
AA
EFA
T
H
LH

EFA H
AA
T
LH

H
LH

Neighborhood Support

Friend Support

Teacher Support

Sources of Social Capital

High Overall = HO
Medium-High Overall = MHO

Teacher = T
Extra-Familial Adults = EFA

All Adults = AA
Home = H

Non-parental = NP
Low Home = LH

Table 3. Predictive Validity Findings

2005 End-of-Grade Tests
Portfolio

School Engagement

High overall
Medium-high overall
Teacher
Extrafamilial adults
All adults
Home
Nonparental
Low home

Trouble Avoidance

Math

Reading

Reference condition
0.34
0.68
0.50
0.50
0.77
0.16
0.82

0.18
0.52
0.64
0.34
0.90
0.47
0.68

0.37
0.00
1.03
0.22
1.43
2.55
0.39

0.00
0.01
1.53
0.75
0.44
2.27
0.16

Note: All models conditioned on race/ethnicity, gender, free/reduced lunch, and retention.
p < .05. p < .01. p < .001.

social capital with LPA rather than summation

approaches. On math, adolescents with the
home portfolio (b = 1.43, p < .05) had lower
test scores than those with high overall,
and (in post hoc tests) home and low
home; nonparental was significantly lower than
high overall in association with test scores
(b = 2.55, p < .001). Those portfolios with
multiple sources (extrafamilial adults, all adults,
and nonparental), as well as both medium-high

overall and low home, were not significantly

different from high overall.
In regards to reading, extrafamilial
adults (b = 1.53, p < .01) and nonparental
(b = 2.27, p < .001) social capital, both of
which had higher family togetherness relative
to parent support, were significantly lower than
high overall, suggesting that not having in-home
adult support would be least promotive regardless of the sources outside of the family. Portfolios found to not be significantly lower than high

554

Family Relations

overall included teacher, all adults, home, and

low home. All adults and home were consistent
with this interpretation of the importance of inhome adult support; whereas in the teacher and
low home portfolios, teacher support was high
relative to all sources, suggesting the importance
of teachers in compensating for other sources.
DISCUSSION
In this study we measured social capital
in a manner we suggest is more consistent
with its conceptualization as a portfolio of
resources specifying the social norms, rules,
and obligationsconduits emerging from
social relationships and networksthat can be
drawn on to benefit adolescents in achieving
their educational objectives. Using a valid and
reliable youth-report ecological assessment
instrument, we examined five dimensions of
self-reported measures representing these types
of relationship supports and social structures
spanning the four key microsystems of youth:
home, school, peers, and neighbors. From
these five dimensions we used an empirical
strategy that identified eight unique groupings of
students according to different patterns of these
dimensions; we referred to these compositions
as social capital portfolios. This approach to
measurement is an effective first step toward
measurement methods that more closely operationalize social capital as originally conceived.
The current methods may also help researchers
understand the role that such portfolios might
play with respect to outcomes in the lives of
adolescents. The current findings also may be
informative of early adolescents tendency to
experience different environmental investments
in social capital. Importantly, we satisfied our
primary objective of examining LPA as an
approach to measure social capital as a portfolio
from multiple microsystems and found that
it provides much greater nuance, particularly
among moderate levels, than a counting
approach could provide. We also demonstrated,
using a predictive validity analysis, this
approach provides a more refined strategy
as there were outcome differences among
portfolios with similar amounts of social capital,
but from different sources. One drawback to
LPA is that, unlike the counting approach, it is
not a variable reduction technique; we started
with five dimensions of support and ended up
with eight uniquely defined portfolios.

These findings endorse the inclusion of multiple sources of social capital spanning the four
central microsystems of youth. Within this multimicrosystem approach, the portfolios displayed
some unique tendencies that challenged and confirmed our hypotheses. First, in confirmation of
our assumptions, in the high overall class, students reported feeling high levels of support and
satisfaction from their interactions with neighborhood adults, teachers, peers, and at home.
Further, these adolescents tended to outperform
their peers in school engagement and trouble
avoidance, as well as in selected portfolios in
academic performance.
Second, though one portfolio was characterized by very low social capital at home, the
students in this portfolio demonstrated greater
reading and math performance than some of the
moderate portfolios. This may be due to the level
of teacher support in this low home portfolio;
prior research including multiple microsystem
measures of social capital has revealed teacher
support as the most powerful predictor of school
performance (e.g., Woolley & Grogan-Kaylor,
2006). It may also be because of the otherwise
relative uniformity of the levels of support across
microsystems, whereas in the moderate portfolios, there were often significant differences by
setting. Thus, the effect of diversification and
consistency may be key facets to examine.
Third, and confirming our assumptions, we
found that students with portfolios with multiple
sources of adult social capital, such as all adults
or nonparental, had higher school engagement
than those with only one source of adult social
capital. On the other hand, the critical sources
of social capital differed for trouble avoidance;
any set of multiple sources were better than any
single source, even if one of those sources was
from peers.
Fourth, the five moderate portfolios that
emerged exhibit the variability in form and level
we hypothesized LPA would identify, and we
suggest that this is an advantage over simple
counting methods. These portfolios indicate that
most of the variability across moderate portfolios
lies in the relative levels of the two home
dimensions. Aside from high and medium-high,
the portfolio with the highest levels of home
supports, nonparental, was among those most
predictive of school outcomes; the difference
between this moderate portfolio and the high
overall and medium-high overall portfolios was
not determined by the level of parent support.

Social Capital Portfolios

Although the data and study design do not
support conclusions about the causal factors
for each students portfolio, some relationship
interactions may be implied in the patterns of
the portfolios: the nature of social capital and
youth experiences in one setting may affect their
perception of and pursuit of social capital in
another setting. For example, adolescents may
seek and obtain teacher supports when in-home
supports are low or report stronger in-home
supports when teacher support is low. In this
case, it seems prudent to hypothesize circular
causality, as it is also likely that when a teacher
perceives a student has limited social resources
at home to promote positive school outcomes,
that teacher may make a larger investment in that
student. Positive student response may initiate a
feedback loop, leading to more teacher support
and positive student outcomes. It also seems
equally plausible that the more support students
have across settings, the more likely they are
to experience positive interactions with adults
and peers. Much work is needed to unpack what
may be very complex patterns of social capital
for youth, but a portfolio measurement strategy
is a step in that direction.
We can only conjecture on the processes
inherent in these portfolios. We argue that these
findings support the measurement approach of
LPA for the conceptualization of social capital
as multidimensional portfolios of supports. We
argue further that LPA reveals that portfolios
consisting of different levels and types of
supports exhibit tendencies to discriminate on
important dimensions of students learning,
including engagement, behavior, and academic
performance. Although there is a tendency for
portfolios with multiple high sources to be better
than portfolios with only a single high source,
the combination of specific sources are relevant.
These findings suggest that the multidimensional
portfolio approach reveals key associations, not
only between social capital from adults in and
outside of the home on school outcomes, but also
between high peer support and avoiding trouble.
Limitations
First, this measurement study used a secondary analysis of data collected for a quasiexperimental evaluation. Therefore, the collection of the current data was not obtained by a
measure conceived through the current lens of
social capital. Although we feel the SSP does

555
an excellent job of measuring the resources in
youths social networks, new measures developed from the social capital conceptualization
advocated above would differ, which presents
an important and ambitious agenda for social
capital research going forward.
Second, because the levels of social capital
cannot be randomly assigned, the evidence of
portfolio pattern effects in the predictive validity
analysis should not be inferred as causal. Other
correlates that are unmeasured may be responsible for the observed relationships, and we cannot
be certain of who is doing the investing in
the portfolios; for example, high teacher support
could derive from the agency of the student or of
the teacher. In future studies examining the relative benefit of these portfolios, some statistical
adjustments such as propensity score matching
of children with the high social capital may help
build causal inferences (Guo & Fraser, 2009).
Third, the predictive validity assessment
uses probabilistic constructs in a deterministic
way, which we remark on further in the
Implications. Fourth, although this approach
can quantify from whom, in what settings,
and how much or often in aggregate, these
dynamics still may not capture the quality of
the social capital experienced, a problem that
plagues all measurement strategies, even those
using putatively qualitative methods such as the
discrete latency of LPA. Sixth, although the
supports can be seen as representing a form
of investment, it is not clear that two children
with the same portfolio will benefit similarly.
Part of this uncertainty is due to the reported
portfolios consisting of the means of the support
levels in each dimension (such that there is
variability within each portfolio) and partly due
to differences in the other forms of capital
(financial, cultural, and human, primarily) that
children can access.
In addition, although we characterize LPA
as an empirically derived approach to classification, the approach is not completely free of
investigator bias. The selection of dimensions
that constitute the measurement of social capital
can be a source of bias. For example, in an
earlier investigation of this approach, a second
dimension of peer support, peer group acceptance, which measured adolescents perceptions
of relative standing in their peer groups and
their ability to retain their individuality although
resisting peer pressure, was included. Unlike
friend support, the items used to measure peer

556

Family Relations

group acceptance are ambiguous about actual

behaviors; items such as I am afraid to do things
my friends wont approve of do not indicate
whether the unidentified things are positive
or negative. This dimension was discarded due
to this ambiguity. Finally, the assumption that
the indicators are conditionally independent
may be problematic. This assumption may be
relaxed if the indicators are allowed to covary
within portfolios. Only the family indicators
(family togetherness and parent support) had a
large zero-order correlation (.62), but these two
indicators do not covary in four of eight portfolios. Conditioned on portfolio membership,
none of the items have correlations above .31
(neighbor and teacher support in the nonparental
portfolio).
Implications
The most important implications are those
supporting the continued development and
promotion of critical research into the conceptualization and measurement of social capital.
First, we have made an effort to clarify that
social capital is more than individual sources of
social support. Rather, it is the constellation of
supportive relationships within and across the
resource-bearing social networks that facilitate
the exchange of resources and potential benefits
(Dika & Singh, 2002; Portes, 1998). Second,
we have argued for continued investigation into
the combined effects of various forms of social
resources and the methods we use to measure
those resources. To that end, we have demonstrated a portfolio approach to the quantification
of social capital that we assert better captures
those multiple sources and resources, responding to suggestions in the literature of weaknesses
in the social capital scholarship; for example,
that social capital has only heuristic value
(Lillibacka, 2006). We argue that this study
shows that multiple sources of social capital
can be meaningfully integrated, quantified, and
examined.
Other critical examinations of social capital
were beyond the purview of the current study
but are essential to further efforts to disentangle
social capital from the network structures and
benefits they provide. For example, the agency
of members of social networks, including the
students themselves, represent a key area of
further inquiry into social capital accumulation
or portfolio building and utilization, an area

obscured by current efforts at measurement

(Brunie, 2009; Hayami, 2009). Further studies
are also needed that address the limitations
of this research. There are methodological
caveats to using the portfolios as predictors
in investigations of student outcomes. LPA is
a probabilistic approach to classification, but
standard approaches to including the portfolios
in outcome models (such as our strategy of using
the most likely portfolio for each student) do not
account for the uncertainty of class membership, treating class membership as deterministic
(Loken, 2004). A promising approach to
accounting for the uncertainty of class membership in class probabilities in other analytic
settings first assumes that actual class membership is missing at random and then uses multiple
imputation to simulate multiple data sets that differ based on the level of uncertainty surrounding
membership (Loken, 2004; Schafer, 1997). This
too was beyond the scope of this study. Other
approaches include using the probabilities of
class membership in post hoc analysis or avoiding the need for post hoc analysis altogether
by incorporating the analysis model into the
measurement model.
Applied to practice endeavors, this measurement strategy suggests a more complex yet informative way to assess social capital data. Previous
findings suggest that teachers and friends are the
most protective sources of social capital in the
context of school outcomes; both sources can
be directly influenced within the school setting.
Teacher social capital is one of the key defining dimensions in these findings; a large deficit
defines one of the portfolios, although in others it stands out among otherwise relatively low
levels. This instability may be an opportunity
for improvement if this measurement strategy
can be implemented in designs providing causal
inference. Because social capital is seen as a less
costly approach to solving a myriad of social
problems (Portes, 1998), using peer and teacher
social capital (which vary across portfolios) as
leverage points has been viewed as a promising
approach to promoting school outcomes.
In using a school setting assessment tool such
as the SSP, which gathers data about multiple settings and sources, such portfolio patterns
can inform decisions about intervention targets and focused use of limited resources. For
example, if a CFLE or social worker were to
recognize a pattern of limited positive adult
interactions in the neighborhood or at school for

Social Capital Portfolios

an adolescent struggling in school, that practitioner would be able to assess, using the
current portfolios, the critical nature of educational supportive interactions with adults at
home and the vital need for building positive
adult relationships outside the family, such as
a mentoring relationship through an organization like Big Brothers Big Sisters. Further,
though we have known for a while about the
critical need for adults in the lives of youth
(e.g., Woolley & Bowen, 2007), and especially
the power of positive relationships with teachers (Woolley & Grogan-Kaylor, 2006), these
portfolios demonstrate the importance of the
constellation of such social-capital-bearing relationships with adults across and among multiple
settings.
Conclusions
A substantial body of research has established
social capital as a positive influence in the
lives of youth. Recent efforts to define and
conceptualize social capital suggest a direction
for improved measurement. In this study, we
demonstrated a measurement strategy that more
closely reflects Colemans (1988) original conceptualization of social capital. LPA was used
to identify and cluster social capital resources
across four key microsystems in a population of
middle-school students. We found conceptually
coherent patterns across those key settings,
which we have labeled social capital portfolios.
Several hypothesized relationships between
those portfolios and educational outcomes were
confirmed whereas others were not, demonstrating a need for further measurement development.
Finally, we assert that continued efforts to
advance the operationalization and measurement
of social capital as originally conceived by Coleman will reinvigorate a currently stagnant yet
still very promising area of youth development
research.

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