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• Social capital in Sweden and Hungary: Comparative analysis along the dimensions of trust, values and interpersonal relationships

  5-28

  Ákos Bodor

  Zoltán Grünhut

  Views:

  193

  This paper examines and compares the Swedish and Hungarian society along three dimensions: interpersonal (generalized) trust, interpersonal relationships, and values of cooperation. These are all crucial components of social capital, could be seen as its most relevant domains, which, in a macro perspective, express the cohesion and integration of a given society. Thus, the above-mentioned indicators provide deep insight into the social fabrics and dynamics of Sweden and Hungary, as well as the potential changes. The empirical analysis is based on data obtained from waves 1–10 of the European Social Survey (ESS). The relevance of the analysis is due to the specific representation of Sweden in the Hungarian political discourse and in some parts of the media. According to this framing integration and cohesion of the Swedish society is in an increasingly poor state, whereas in Hungary things are going much better. Our paper aims to shed light on this issue along the dimensions presented above. Our results show that, in terms of the dimensions of social capital examined, Swedish society is not in a bad state at all, and in fact presents a significantly more favourable picture than Hungarian society on the basis of the same indicators.

• Certain issues of reliability and validity in the case of generalized trust survey measurement in light of the Hungarian data

  5-22

  Akos Bodor

  Mark Hegedus

  Views:

  192

  Trust is a field of research in social sciences that has complex, well-developed theoretical
  approaches, but its empirical tools are less precisely grounded. The most common survey tool
  for measuring generalized trust is a formula often referred to in the literature as “standard”
  trust question, which reads as follows: “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can
  be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?” The aim of the paper is to
  examine this standard survey item along the dimensions of reliability and validity. In our analysis,
  we use Hungarian data obtained from various international surveys. Our results indicate serious
  validity problems, as the standard question shows only weak linkage with additional variables,
  which, based on the conceptual background, should be in a close relationship with trust.
  KEYWORDS: trust, generalized trust, survey methods, reliability, validity