Determinants of social capital for rural residents in some villages in Sohag governorate, Egypt

The research aimed to measure the degree of social capital among rural residents in the research area, as well as to identify the nature of the relationship between the independent variables of the respondents and their degree of social capital, to identify the obstacles to social capital from the respondents' point of view, and to identify the respondents' proposals for developing and increasing social capital. The research was conducted on a sample of 376 respondents who were selected using a simple random method from among the heads of rural households in six villages in the centers of Sohag and Al-Monshah, with three villages from each center; the centers and villages were selected randomly. The data was collected through personal interviews with the respondents using a questionnaire prepared specifically for this purpose. Frequencies, percentages, weighted average, simple correlation coefficient (Pearson), and chi-square test were used to display the data. The results showed the following: nearly two-fifths of the respondents (38.8%) had a low degree of social capital, nearly half of them (46.6%) had an average degree of social capital, and (14.6%) of the respondents had a high degree of social capital. There is a significant relationship at a significance level of 0.01 between the following independent variables: age, total monthly income of the respondent, number of family members, degree of ambition, degree of innovation, degree of leadership, family cohesion, degree of feeling of social appreciation, gender, educational level, profession, and marital status, and the degree of social capital in general among the respondents.