Study Of Indicators On Social Capital For Community Older People

Backgrounds: As an important concept, social capital theory has been a hot academictopic in sociology, politics and economics, and has been brought into the health fieldsince1980s. Researches show that social capital has an important impact on health.Older people are high risk population of many diseases. As china has the largest oldpopulation in the world, the demand for health resource is increasing rapidly. Socialcapital is an invisible capital, it offers people a new way to cope with the stress, broughtfrom the shortage of visible capital.Aims: To get a general idea of the current situation of social capital and thecharacteristics of its factors among community old people in china. To develop socialcapital questionnaire among older people, which can be used widely in health field. Toevaluate and improve the questionnaire, developed during the Delphi consultation.Methods: An item pool of social capital among older people is to be complied based onliterature reviews and focus subject interview. The three round Delphi method wasadopted to form the first draft of social capital questionnaire for old people.Convenience sampling was used to choose older people of xing-hua community inHefei, hua-di community in Suzhou, and villages in Yong-Qiao district of Suzhou.Epidata3.0was used to do the data input, and SPSS15.0was used to do the dataanalysis. Quantitative data were expressed by mean±standard deviation, andQualitative data were expressed by ratio or proportion. Kendall’w coefficient was usedto express the coordination coefficient of each item evaluated by experts. The reliability of social capital questionnaire was expressed by Cronbach’s α, and the constructvalidity was expressed in factor analysis.Results:(1)Community organizations of older persons in China overall low level ofparticipation, most of the elderly did not participate in the organization, the elderly inurban take more participation than rural elderly; community cohesion and sense ofbelonging, trust and other cognitive social capital, the rural elderly in China is betterthan the city the elderly, the relationship between the rural elderly are more harmonious,more united and can often help each other, a higher degree of trust, good communitycohesion.(2) The results of the first round consultation: The positive coefficient of Experts is100%, the mean authority coefficient of each item evaluated is above0.7, the totalcoordination coefficient in importance of each item is0.187, the total coordinationcoefficient in operability of each item is0.312.5first grade assessment indicator,11second grade assessment indicator, and32third grade assessment indicators arereserved.(3) The results of the second round consultation: The positive coefficient of Experts is90%, the total coordination coefficient in importance of each item is0.158, the totalcoordination coefficient in operability of each item is0.243.5first grade assessmentindicators,10second grade assessment indicators, and26third grade assessmentindicators are reserved.(4) The reliability and validity aspects: the instrument is good in internal consistencyreliability. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the entire questionnaire0.917, theCronbach’s alpha coefficients of5dimensions ranging between0.843and0.933.Experts’ advice can ensure the questionnaire has good content validity. In constructvalidity, the questionnaires were extracted five principal components accounted for73.59%of the total variance. Conclusions: The indicators on social capital for older people includes5first gradeassessment indicators,11second grade assessment indicators, and26third gradeassessment indicators. The indicators on social capital for older people are well inreliability and validity, and are suitable for older people in china.