Multidimensional Description of Social Capital in Different Contexts: With Regard to Indian and Iranian Female Students

The core concept of this article i.e. social capital consists of three main components: scope of social relations, level of social trust, and rate of reciprocity. The research is accomplished through 600 cases of Indian and Iranian female secondary school students and their parents, in two cities of Chandigarh in India and Tehran in Iran. Findings of the research show that the scope of social relations in India is higher than Iran, while the true level which was measured in the social network in Iran was far higher than India. Even the third aspect i.e. the reciprocity is also higher in Iran than India. Therefore, the social capital measured among the Iranian cases is higher than the Indian students and their families. Likewise, the level of trust estimated among Indian people is higher than the true level of trust present in the social network whereas; an exact opposite situation could be seen in Iran. In other words, the different aspects of social capital do not necessarily have a high co-variation among themselves.