Las aportaciones del apoyo social al capital social: propuesta de un modelo integrado y convergente.

Social capital has recently become remarkably important in all social science disciplines. Its multidisciplinary character, intangibility and circular nature are significant obstacles to its being quantified and incorporated into the models that explain economic reality. Recent papers have established relationships among social capital, social networks and social support as a result of the convergence of research in areas such as economics and psychology. In economics, social capital is considered a resource for development and is measured through indicators that are related with trust and social networks, among others. The social support research tradition, however, approaches it from a perspective which facilitates its measurement by level (micro, meso, macro). This paper shows the convergence between the social capital and social support concepts and incorporates psychosocial elements into the measurement of social capital in order to facilitate its inclusion in multidisciplinary models that explain the economic or social reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]