Abstract
Cultural capital is frequently measured via the number of books in a respondent’s household. Despite this measure’s widespread use, its quality remains largely unclear. To remedy this, we conducted a comprehensive assessment of the measurement properties of two items measuring past and present objectified cultural capital via the number of books in the household of the respondent’s family of origin and the respondent’s current household, respectively. For this purpose, we used data (N = 3260) from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) 2012 survey in Germany and the 2015 wave of a follow-up study (PIAAC-L). We analyzed the two items’ distributions (total sample and separately by age-group), test-retest reliability over 3 years (for past cultural capital only), and their convergent and divergent validity (i.e., correlations with socioeconomic status, literacy and numeracy skills, and cultural and literary activities).Our analyses (1) reveal that past and present objectified cultural capital are substantially but not perfectly related (ρ = .52), which may reflect intergenerational transmission; (2) demonstrate that the item measuring past objectified cultural capital shows high test-retest reliability over three years (ρ = .74); and (3) attest to both the convergent and divergent reliability of both items, as indicated by systematic yet only small to medium-sized correlations with socioeconomic status, literacy and numeracy skills, and cultural and literary activities. At the same time, our analyses (4) underscore that cultural capital is not a uniform construct, highlighting that the number of books captures a specific aspect of the concept (i.e., objectified cultural capital). Our findings can serve as a benchmark for future research on cultural capital.
Highlights
In his seminal work, Pierre Bourdieu (1973, 1986) distinguished three fundamental forms of capital that, in his view, allow for a more complete and nuanced understanding of social reproduction and the societal distribution of power
Considering the correlation between past and present objectified cultural capital, we found a moderate correlation (Spearman’s rho) of ρ = .52 between the number of books at age 16 and the present number of books at home in the current household among the PIAAC-L 2015 respondents
Our findings show that objectified cultural capital as measured by the number of books has at least moderate correlations with both sociodemographic status and skills (Table 5)
Summary
Pierre Bourdieu (1973, 1986) distinguished three fundamental forms of capital that, in his view, allow for a more complete and nuanced understanding of social reproduction and the societal distribution of power. According to his conceptualization, economic capital refers to economic resources (e.g., income, property). Objectified cultural capital comprises tangible cultural goods such as books or works of art that can, in Sieben and Lechner Measurement Instruments for the Social Sciences (2019) 2:1 contrast to incorporated cultural capital, be physically transferred It is the latter form of cultural capital that the widespread “number of books in the household” items capture
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