Measuring workplace social capital: empirical evidence from China

Introduction: Social capital at work has been regarded as an important factor to workers’ health, and to companies’ productivity and efficiency as well. However, all evidence is based on empirical studies from developed countries.  

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to evaluate a short measure of workplace social capital in a sample of Chinese workers.  

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2854 homogeneous working women (female nurses working in 12 hospitals). The 6-item workplace social capital scale (including trust, justice, and collaboration) was derived from the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire. A self-reported physician diagnosis of cardiovascular disease was used to test criterion validity.  

Results: In addition to satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient=0.82), confirmatory factor analysis showed a good model fit of the data with the theoretical structure (AGFI=0.97). At the hospital level, high social capital in workplace was associated with low prevalence of cardiovascular disease (p=0.01); at the individual level, workers with high social capital had low risk for cardiovascular disease (OR=0.85, 95% CI 0.73-0.98), too.  

Discussion/Conclusions: Our study provides a psychometrically useful tool, i.e. a workplace social capital scale, in the Chinese context of psychosocial work environment and health. High social capital is associated with low risk of cardiovascular disease at the individual as well as the organizational level.