Social Capital Rapid Review: Call for Evidence

Please note that this call closed on the 20th of May 2022.

Have you conducted an evaluation of a project or programme aimed at improving social capital outcomes – belonging, social support or community cohesion? Then we want to hear from you!

What is happening?

The What Works Centre for Wellbeing (WWCW) has commissioned the Centre for Thriving Places to conduct a Rapid Review of evaluations of social capital interventions aimed at children, young people and adults, and delivered within the UK and across OECD countries. The project is funded by the National Lottery Community Fund. 

Criteria for submission

We are looking for evaluations that report quantitative findings on the impact of interventions aimed at improving: 

• neighbourhood belonging – “I feel like I belong to this neighbourhood’ 
• social network support – “I believe that someone would be there for me if I needed help’ 
• community cohesion – “I believe that my neighbourhood is a place where people from different backgrounds get on well’ 

We are interested in studies from across voluntary, public and private sectors, to summarise evidence on what works to improve social capital outcomes, for whom and in what contexts. 

Submitted studies must meet ALL of the following criteria: 

• Evaluate a project or intervention conducted in the UK or in an OECD country with children, young people and/or adults. This can be in any setting, including: community interventions, health interventions, social care/services interventions, education/skills-based interventions and workplace interventions. 
• Explore the impact on social capital using a measure/s that capture one or more of the following outcomes: neighbourhood belonging, social network support and community cohesion.
• Measure changes in social capital outcome scores against a comparator. This could be by conducting a before-and-after intervention assessment by measuring the social capital outcome at baseline (e.g. pre-intervention) and at endline (post-intervention).
• Published from 2000-onwards and include author details and date.
• Written in the English language and publicly available 

Next steps

Please send any relevant studies to evaluation@whatworkswellbeing.org by Friday 20th May. Please include the subject header: Social Capital Rapid Review.  

Thank you for your help.

Why a call for evidence?

Searching for evidence on wellbeing and related topics can present technical and resource challenges, particularly if studies are not adequately indexed by study design or wellbeing measures used. Our experience has shown that some of the wellbeing research produced by our Centre’s audiences is best located through a snowballing approach, by targeting relevant experts and stakeholders.

As part of our evidence reviews, we often use calls for evidence to complement structured database and online literature searches, and, in particular, to increase the sensitivity of grey literature searches. Where necessary, we seek advice from our project consultation groups to ensure quality and fully document the approach in our reports to maximise transparency. 

To find out more about the project go to the Social capital: Evidence review and synthesis project page.