Social Capital in General Population of Tehran Province in Comparison with Other Provinces of Iran

 Social capital is described on the basis of the quality of social relations between individuals and it includes the capacity of quantifying or solving the problems that are usually experienced. It is a means to improve the quality of life and facilitate community progress through the provision of social communication resources. By considering the importance of monitoring the process of social capital and informing about its functions, and the changes related to its components and paying attention to the results in terms of mental health programs, we examined the status of social capital among the residents of Tehran province who were over the age of 18.

 This cross-sectional analytical study is part of The Iranian Children and Adolescents’ Psychiatric Disorders Research (IRCAP) which is being carried out in various urban and rural areas of Iran. IRCAP includes different background features such as social capital, culture, ethnicity and economic status from different provinces. In our community-based study, 29776 men and women over the age of 18 years were selected by multistage cluster sampling (cluster sampling and random sampling). They were examined by Social Capital Questionnaire. One-sample t-test and multivariate analysis were used to analyze the data.

 In Tehran province from a total of 2065 participants, 1841 remained in the study for examination of all variables. Based on the one-sample t-test the results show that all variables for province of Tehran was higher than those for the other provinces (p<0.001). The average social capital of trust in the province of Tehran was 18.77 while it was 17.52 for other provinces (with minimum and maximum range of 5-25) (p<0.001). However the social capital status in Tehran   was above the average for all variables, it was still far from optimal level.

 Our results show that social capital in Tehran is higher than other provinces in Iran. This includes both total social capital and its all components. However, the province of Tehran is above the average level in all components of social capital, it is still far from optimal level.