| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1129154 | Social Networks | 2015 | 9 Pages |
•The ‘position generator’ measures individuals’ occupational contact networks.•We analyze sensitivity to composition of occupations in the list provided to respondents.•The contribution of different occupations to measures of contact networks differ vastly.
The position generator is a widespread method for measuring latent social capital in which respondents are queried about contacts on a list of occupations predefined by the analyst. We separate out the unique contribution of each occupation to aggregated measures of social capital. It turns out that this contribution varies vastly: knowing a person in some occupations provides substance to measures of social capital, while knowing a person in a few occupations is irrelevant and contributes statistical noise and causes attenuation bias. We discuss the implication of our findings for the design of position generator measures generally.
