What is Social Capital?

There is a debate on what Social Capital is since 1983 yet. In 1999 the World Bank launched a
Social Capital Initiative in which three Nobel Laureates were involved:
Elinor Ostrom, Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz.
The initiative has been cancelled in 2004 yet.
The Social Capital Assessment follows the definition of Social Capital to being
interpersonal perceptions of trust, solidarity, helpfulness and friendliness.
Of course there are many other definitions to be found in the literature.

Who is allowed to score?

On trustyourplace.com everyone can score. But for the official result of a place
we also ask experts. If the public score differs too strong, we will review the place.

Who are the experts?

The experts in general are people with a track record to estimate the situation in a country.
They can be delegates of organizations and countries living at
the place to be scored for a while. They can be local journalists and scientists, artists and businessmen.

Can I suggest an expert?

Of course! Just send a mail to Dr. Alexander Dill at  dill@commons.ch

How many scores are necessary to score a place?

That depends on the so called “standard deviation”, how the answers differ
from each other in average. The lower the standard deviation is, the less
scores are needed.
It is possible to achieve a valid score from ten votes on yet for a smaller village or district.

Why don’t you publish a ranking ?

Our study on nine leading international indices (including the Human Development
Index) showed, that global rankings can be unilateral biased.

What if several hundred users collaborate to manipulate the score
of a place?

Such a manipulation would quickly collide with the expert opinion
and other correct votes.

Why don’t you ask for life satisfaction, happiness and well-being?

Because we’d like to measure the condition of a community, not of an individual.