the instrument
The Position Generator (Lin & Dumin, 1986;
Lin, Fu, and Hsung, 2001) is currently the most often used survey
instrument for the measurement of individual social
capital. It does not include the mapping of an ego-centered network (as
with the use of Name Generators), which may save a lot of interview time.
Instead, it is based on the idea that a list of `positions' in the form of
occupation titles can 1) be used as cues to report network members, and 2)
can be used to give indications of the social resource collections that are
embedded in an individual's social network by means of occupational
prestige indices. The Position Generator is specifically designed for the
measurement of access to social resources useful in instrumental
actions. Its operationalisation is directly based on the notion that
occupational prestige is a good indicator of social resources. More
specifically, it is assumed that network members with higher occupational
prestiges control more (financial and cultural) resources, and have more
influence on third parties (political resources).
strong and weak points
The current popularity of the Position
Generator in social capital studies can easily be explained by its
methodological advantages. First, the instrument is constructed from a firm
theoretical basis, which is universal enough to enable similar applications
across various populations and cultures. Second, the construction of
indicators from its data has largely been standardised (see Van der Gaag & Snijders, 2003; Van der Gaag, Snijders & Flap, 2008). Both
aspects allow for easy comparisons between studies. Where Name Generators
can lead to lengthy interviews, and Resource
Generator instruments can be troublesome in their construction because
of interculturally disputable answers to the question "what are useful and
usable social resources?", Position Generators have the disadvantage that
they require an extra interpretation step in terms of the instrumentality
of accessing social prestige: not every social capital question can be
translated into such terms, especially when the use of social resources in
expressive actions is studied (Van der Gaag,
Snijders & Flap, 2008).
construction
There are several practical issues to consider
when constructing a Position Generator instrument: which and how many
occupations should be selected, how these should be worded (see Erickson,
2004; Van der Gaag, 2005: ch.6), and optionally, which resource indices
should be used in the construction of measures. Instead of developing a new Position Generator, you may
want to check whether you can use existing, name generated data, which can
sometimes be converted into responses `as if' resulting from Position
Generator items, provided they contain sufficient numbers of Name
Generators, and name interpretation data about network members'
occupations.
So far, the Position Generator has been applied in many different social capital studies. A comprehensive selection of such studies is listed in this overview. The 2008 Lin and Erickson volume 'Social capital: An International Research Program' features many of them. If you know of other important Position Generator studies not listed here (perhaps your own) let me know.
related paper