Background: Measuring of social capital has turned out to be a point view in most social studies Social capital defined as linkage among social systems and groups for strengthening communication among citizens.  Notwithstanding, there is neglect for that among gerontologists sociologically.

Method: This study attend to portray distribution of social capital within 3031 aged samples in eight counties of Khuzistan province in southwest of Iran with the majority of Arab dwellers during 2020. About 26 definitions for indicators of social capital were mentioned and 23 main categories were collected.

Results: Finally, the instrument for collection of data was conducted by them. Social Intermediary is new indicator to estimate social capital about elders first time.  Findings have mentioned new definition for social capital in Gerontological aspect.

Discussion and Conclusion: There are most deference and variations within indicators of social capital upon rural are and ethnicity that war policies about seniors in society.

Keywords: indicators, Iran, khuzistan province, measurement, monte carlo simulation sampling, social capital

The human society has experienced traditional and constant order.  There was a time when policy making, states, values and norms, social and religious beliefs, and life styles were not in constant change, evaluation doubts, and suspicion.  Administrators of society managed to enforce order in social context of such a situation through various implements and so to respond to livelihood and social meets of their society's members.  Industrial revolution and booming of technology in the West and around the world increased fast technical progressing and amid that we encountered the development wedge, needs, and prospects.  This phenomenon itself provoked seditions and turbulences in society in a way to direct urbanization.  These polemic situations deliberated the Scientific and administrative contributors to reform and re - order the society for progress and development.

At first, the progress and development were translated and shaped only within economic and technical improvement and recovery.  An increase of national incomes and productions was emphasized, and more so, the importation of environment and nature by modern technology and Science. But, social scientists deduced that in this progress and report with comparative research to other non – Western societies; there is another capital which was cropped and shaped by unanimity, assimilation, co-working, and participation of commons to achieve their shared goals predicated social capital. This kind of capital is produced by appropriate norms and values ​​of assimilation and co-production. Also it is resulted via reciprocal interactions and trusts, joint values, existence of requirement backgrounds, and bases (political and social context and various social networks) for the involvement of all cities in active and consequent participation.

Nowadays, developed countries are enterprising in their macro planning for society annual time by my capital along with economic and commercial investments. Nonetheless, developing societies have faced various barriers such as dissatisfaction and inefficiency in administrative parts, reduction of trusty and reciprocal actions among citizens and within common - state, and lack of participatory and volunteering beliefs for the improvement of social problems. All of them could be evaluated in the field of social capital within organized networks for pathology of social system.

The main issue giving rise to this research is that social capital in the macro level of social and economic planning was not paid the due attention, hence a particular situation among destination factors of collective system. This study attended to describe this phenomenon among the increasing population of aged citizen in great districts of Khuzistan province in southwest of Iran. This community is the best reference group for the next generation and tends to have a higher rate of increasing population than the natural rate.  In this study, the amount of level and distribution of social capital among elder population of selected urban colons of some cities in Khuzistän Province (southwest of Iran near Iraq's border line, with the majority of Arab dwellers) namely Ahwaz, Abädän, Mäh-Shahr Port, Behbahän, Izeh, Andimeshk, Dasht-Azadegän, and Dezful were evaluated in 2020.

Conceptual framework

Human nature requires communication and relations with others for the fulfillment of needs and achievement of goals and that is how “the society” is shaped. Interpersonal relationships among citizens lead to the exchange of information. The commons define and take collective revenues via various social networks such as neighborhood, friendship, kinship, and family; while their individual and plural life style is be improved by active participation in society. Whenever these relations have a strong basis and high quality and quantity, and act more systematically and harmonically; the collective goals would be most reachable in less time and with lower cost. In this situation, social capital needs to be evaluated and studied as particular compound of social relationships and the quality of such relations. Social relationships will be the same as social capital when it bases on reciprocal norms and is issued by joint norms and values of citizens. Social capital will lead to a simplified participation process of members for achievement of common revenues. Notwithstanding, there is social capital neither within individuals and nor in social structure; rather, it is formed among relational space of individuals. Social capital is not owned by the state, a particular organization, or the market; rather the whole society can participate in producing it. Social capital is composed by thousand interactions of everyday life among people.¹ According to table one, there are a lot of definitions for this concept from past till now. It initially shows the best definitions of social capital and then mentions its main parts (Table 1).

Now the polemic subject is “what are the components of social capital?” According to the above definitions, there are details and traits in social structure order interactions among people and guide them to particular ways that provide collective revenues easily. Random and temporary social relations cannot be the provider of collective revenues, but they should be as tough networks or institutionalized relations, according to Bourdieu (Bourdieu, 1986). The social relations would be a potential resource for providing collective revenues and goals when they are within trusty sphere and norms, based on voluntary participation of others. The present definition of social capital is nearest to Putnam's definition, which referred to structural dimension of social capital as “Networks” and objectivity and cognitive dimension of social capital and subjectivity as “Trust” and “Norms." According to David Halpern² the dimensions of social capital are as:

1. Norms, Values, and Expectancies
2. Networks
3. Warranty of Sanctions.²

Two of the parts above have been mentioned beforehand, but the third phenomenon could be given to members and citizens formally or informally as “rewards” and “punishments.” Warranty of sanctions might be as ordinal sanctions, not necessarily as norms but in formal law and article with bankroll of government. It is better to pay attention that particular parts of warranty of sanctions, which are informal and alliterated norms, could be as social capital discussible within the norms of society rather than in separate. Instead, formal norms as governmental laws and articles could be as reinforcements and providers of social capital because, according to Coleman,³ judicial and governmental law and norms are not concealed in social relations; rather, they are authorized out of such bonds³. The creative sources of social capital are family, scholar places, markets and trade unions, neighborhood communities, and citizenship institutes.⁴ All of these fountains are important, but citizenship institutes might be more vital. In the production of social capital, the main sources are the minimum times that members devote to voluntary institutions rather than spending in family^5,6. Like other social phenomena, all kinds of capital should be reserved in society together until they could be beneficial and useful for society. If every kind of capital is reserved for a particular group or cast than for revenues of society, they would have negative and inadvisable results^6,7.

Instrumentation

Putnam's definition⁸ for social capital serves as the basic operationalized definition of this study. According to him, social capital in collected aspects of social system which facilitate agreement and collaboration of people for receiving joint revenues.⁸ These aspects are Norms Social Networks and Reciprocal Trust.  To take the best views on the measuring of social capital and IE Indicators, some related studies and national research were evaluated and studied.  These include namely measuring social capital in five regions of Australia by Bullen and Onyx,⁹ Richard Rose's study on social capital and lifestyle in Russia,¹⁰ Narayan and Dippa's indicators for social capital, measurement of social capital as structural and cognitive aspect in India and Panama by Krishna and Schrader,¹¹ social capital survey of Benchmark under supervision Putnam, Indicators of social capital by Australian  Bureau of Statistics [ABS],¹² study of Grootaert and others,¹³ and Stone and Hughe's works and research (2001 to 2004) in Australian Institute for Family Studies^14,15. Briefly speaking, social capital is divided into the three main domains of Networks, Trust, and Norms and 23 sub items.  Accordingly, indexes of social capital and its references are listed in Table 2.

In accordance with the above classification for social capital and its definitions, the indicators, operational concerts, and indexes of social capital are stated in table three upon citations of Table 3.

The questionnaire of the study was composed with respect to the above indicators and indexes of social capital in quintuple scale (among 1 to 5).  Firstly, Social Capital Inventory (SCI) was evaluated by expert and professional judges.  Secondly, after reforming some of the clearly operationalized variables and indexes, the validity of accessory variables was obtained by two techniques (Internal validity of items and split hall validity) (Table 4).

According to table four, validity of basic indexes of social capital was 0. 76 for trust and norms=0.71 and social networks=0.69. Validity of other sub indexes was estimated by Cronbasch alpha, which stated data such as value of life= 0.65, tolerance =0.74, self - efficiency = 0.76, cooperation =0.66, companionship =0.68.  Security sense= 0.71, formal trusty =0.78, social participation =0.65, civil participation= 0.77, social support= 0.70, and informal trusty =0.81.Also, the evaluation of social capital by Cronbusch alpha was respectively 0.82 and 0.76, which accords with the acceptance of outcomes.

Community and sampling

The statistical community of the study is the aged population of 60 year olds and above, among the majority of Arab dwellers in Khuzistin province in south west of Iran near Iraq borderline such as Ahwaz, Dezful, Abadan,  Behbahan,  Andimeshk, Dasht – Azadegan,  Izeh, and  Mah -Shahr Port.  Total population of aged dwellers was 378946 seniors upon recent local census 2017 in eight selected counties (for province 539880).  The samples were 3031 used in cluster sampling within 375 to 381 variety clusters for each county as shown in Table 5 live (ISCC, 2007; KSCC, 2007).

The rationale for the selection of these eight counties is the main and crowded residential areas in the province.  All the counties are located in geographical sides (Behbahan and Izeh as eastern Abadan and Mah-Shahr Port as southern, Dezful and Andimeshk as northern, Dasht - Azadegan as the only western city, and Ahwaz in centre of Khuzistan province).  Every cities is typical for one of the three ethnics (Ahwaz and  Mah - Shahr Port are typical for the mix of ethnics, Izeh and Andimeshk as Lor ethnic, Abadan and Dasht - Azaldegan as Arab, and Dezful and Behbahan as Persian).  Sampling was based upon the two variables, ethnicity (three ethnic groups: Arabs, Lors, and Persians) and the kind of settlement as in urban and rural areas. Even though attention to the variable of gender is very important for authors, any interview with women especially the elders was unfortunately too difficult for the scholars, and they were selected by examiners randomly. Hence, this item was eventually deleted for the sake of basic sampling.

Monte carlo simulation sampling

It’s not possible these days to obtain information from an entire population we’re interested since it’s neither practical nor efficient. So, it’s always a question how to conclude out of studying limited number of sample groups. Hence, authenticity of our samples as representative of the whole population must be guaranteed. In addition, considering the fact that we are applying samples rather than a whole population, statistical techniques’ assumptions must be followed carefully in order to maximize their performance. However, traditional assumptions occasionally either are not supported or there is uncertainty in the sample values. To overcome these challenges, two advanced statistical techniques were added by IBM SPSS Statistics that allow users to estimate Bootstrapping and Monte Carlo Simulation in versions 18 and 21, respectively. The basic idea behind bootstrapping is creating additional samples by resampling data (with replacement) from the original sample instead of obtaining additional samples from the population who are hard to reach due to their familiarity. By following the same data distribution as in the original sample, the created samples are likely to be representative of the population. Bootstrapping also is helpful in situations where the exact sampling distribution of the statistics is hard to achieve. Monte Carlo is a computational technique based on constructing a random process for a problem and carrying out a Numerical Experiment by N-fold sampling from a random sequence of numbers with a prescribed probability distribution. Although bootstrapping technique is simple, method of Monte Carlo sampling is one of its strongest models and applied to determine and estimate the statistical accuracy and the distribution from real-world sample statistics, respectively.¹⁶ In return, Bootstrapping technique is quite useful in unreachable and less well-known community such as elderly dwellers in Southwest Iran (52,750,265 older adults in the census of 2016), resulting in 98% confidence into 3031 samples.

Descriptive findings demonstrated that 64 per cent of samples were men, 96 per cent married, 38 per cent Persian, 32 per cent Arab, 30 per cent Lor, the average of age 66 years old (minimum age 60  and maximum age 98). Among all samples (n=3031), 32 per cent stated that they knew themselves that they had chronic diseases. 27 per cent lived lonely, 12 per cent had retired from governmental sections, 43 per cent were rural dwellers, 17 per cent were loyal members of NGOs or governmental groups, 7 per cent were resident in nursing home. The generalization of the data to Khuzistänid elder women was not totally reliable. According to table six, counties of Dezful, Behbahän, and DashtAzadegän have the least social trusty but Ahwaz, Izeh, and Mäh-Shahr Port have the most. The distribution of trusty to unknown persons showed that more than half of the aged people (53.7 per cent) selected “never have trust” with the scale of 5 degree, approximately 4 samples among 5 elderly persons. Ranking of governmental organizations and NGOs upon trusty variable showed a range from the most trusty: Education and literacy organization, charitable NGOs, familial cash members, health and medicine system, police and security system, judiciary system, National Television of Iran (IRIB) to the least trusty for Islamic Parliament of Iran, Bank and commercial system, mass media, particularly newspapers, and markets (see table six).

Approximately, all the aged participants believed that the future of trusty in Iranian society is declining and there is no promising prospect for it. Factor analysis of the variable of participation and its secondary items applied to Dezful, Behbahän, and Mäh-Shahr port Dwellers have the least participation as a whole especially in civil participation. Evaluation of some variables as factors show that all elder dwellers of Khuzistän have the highest range and score in these variables: local companionships, self-efficiency, social intermediary (particularly in this variable), emotional support, religious participation, and local participation. There is a different situation in the scores of some variables that might depend to ethnicity background; Arab, Persian, and Lor ethnic, and the kind of settlement; rural or urban. Table seven indicates average scores of secondary variables of social capital while quintuple scale (between 1 and 5) upon ethnicity and the kind of settlement among aged samples of Khuzistän (eight counties). Also, table eight illustrates the ranking of counties and the average score of social capital and the basic variables of it. As mentioned before, each county could be a candidate for every ethnic group stated in alphabetical abbreviation of them next to the name of counties (C: complex of every ethnic groups, A: Arab, P: Persian, and L: Lor) (Table 6).

Wholly, the scores of these indexes were more than the median score (3) among aged samples: factor of informal trusty, cooperation, companionship, social intermediary, commercial support, local participation, religious participation, social solidarity, and membership in cultural groups. Ascending ranking of every county in scores of social capital, according to a significant difference of factors mentioned for all of counties, was more than the average score. Counties of Izeh, Ahwäz, and Andimeshk are the highest and Dasht-Azadegän and Abädän are the lowest in ranking. Distribution of basic items of social capital among counties state that Abädän in networks variable, but DashtAzadegän in norms and trust variables have the least scores. According to ethnic stratification of counties, they are Arab dwellers cities, but the rank of social capital for Izeh is as high as the counties with Lor dwellers.

Social development could not be reduced to social capital, but it can be acceptable at social capital overplay the main part of the sphere which would be useful for practitioners of social development. In this study, according to Robert Putnam theory and some research and survey, it  was attempt to find the range and ranking of basic and secondary indexes of social capital among aged dwellers of 60 years old and above in eight selected counties of Khuzistan province in southwest of Iran. Findings showed deferent distribution of threefold basic and 20 fold secondary variables of social capital according to county, ethnicity, and kind of settlement. Estimation of secondary variables of social capital state these accessory indexes higher than the average o quintuplet scale( more than 3) among aged population  e.g. informal trust, membership in cultural groups, cooperation, companionship, social intermediary, local participation, religious participation and social solidarity.  These details highlight that social capital as a kind of relationship among the elderly is being shaped informally and locally. The distribution of scores particularly basic indexes of social capital according to ethnicity and kind of settlement, demonstrates that all Arabic counties and Persian cities in some issues have the least grades in social capital scores.  For example, Dasht - Azdegan and Abadan (Arab residents areas) have 2.1 and 2.6 scores (average) and Bebhan and Dezful as Persian counties have than 2.5 score.  The Lor and mixed ethnic counties are above the medium scores (2.5), which represent a higher degree in social capital domains Rural settlements have different aspects and issues in social capital indexes than urban areas. For instance, they have most scores in these factors (above 3.5): informal trust, cooperation, companionship, social intermediary, emotional support, commercial support, local participation, religious participation, membership in cultural groups, and social solidarity.

It is noteworthy that the urban dwellers have the same scores in some issues in rural areas in cooperation, companionship, social intermediary, local participation, religious participation, membership in cultural groups, and social solidarity.  Nevertheless, they have higher scores than rural areas. In these factors (above 3.5): tolerance, formal trust, and civil traditions. Generally, the least scores(less than 2) of all areas and ethnicities were capable of trust, security sense, self - efficiency, and new style of participation.  As a polemic issue in Khuzistan province, where ethnic groups in special and the aged dwellers of the province in particular do not have the sense of security and efficient personality, this leads to a new kind of participation in society with conservative vision.  Evaluation of organizations and groups according these 20plet variables of social capital indicated that the non - governmental groups and organizations are in the first rank and the aged dwellers trust them more than governmental ones. Religious participation as one of the variables in social capital was an important determinant in the community of the study. Religious attitudes and behaviors characterized in the form of religious costumes could be adequate in cultural policy and decision making for the effect and reinforcement on the indicators of social capital in the elder population of Khuzistan province and Iran. Social intermediary (as a new index for the evaluation of social capital made by authors) has cool scores among samples as desirable institutionalized element for social capital in Iranian culture. This variable could be sustained for other indexes of social capital with a favorable effect on them and participation and trust in society particularly among aging people who reduce their social moment to other members of community.  Even though there are new styles of social participation among elder samples, taken at a glance, there are more particular rather than common. This is particularly the case with family aspects and sphere as well as uttermost increase in kinship and cognation "Harem" (familial sanctum) in Arab and Lor ethnics. Infirmity and intolerance of social capital in non -governmental participation and interactions as civil customs can be related to the inefficiency of cultural policies for institutionalization of this category. Notwithstanding, this concept exists more within Iranian cultural system. Historical existence of religious cults and complexes in this society could be able to aid social capital and redefinition of its social functions.

This article has been prepared with the virtual patronage of Municipal Bureaus of eight districts of Khuzistän province and Department of Social Work at University of Applied Science and Technology (UAST). Also, we are grateful colleagues and the anonymous referees for their encouraging comments.

The authors declare they have no conflicts of interest that are directly or indirectly related to the research.

None.

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