Chapter 5: The Past, Present, and Future of social capital Measurement Among Transition-Age Youth

The role of social relationships in child and adolescent development has long captured the attention of researchers from a range of disciplines (Lee, 2014). It was Coleman’s (1988) foundational research, however, that launched social capital theory into the educational research mainstream, and the concept of social capital has since become a mainstay in scholarship addressing a host of youth outcomes (Lee, 2014). Social capital theory posits that individuals gain access to valued information, advice, and assistance via personal relationships (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988; Lin, 2001; Portes, 1998; Putnam, 1995), making it an especially popular framework through which to explain how youth access (or not) resources critical for successfully navigating postsecondary transitions (for recent summaries see Almeida, 2015; Stephan, 2013).