Introduction

Generally, to evaluate the Social-Cultural Level (SCL), the educational level, occupational status and income of the participant or of all family members are measured. However, SCL is a more general construct which involves also cultural capital (CC) and social capital. CC concerns the knowledge of cultural codes that are relevant for the society in which the individual lives. Very few scales of CC are available and most of them are limited to specific areas of knowledge. Because of this, we developed the Scale of Cultural Capital (SCC), a 14 items scale of CC, rated on a 5-point Likert scale, to be used in industrialized countries.

Objectives

The aim of the present study was to investigate via confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) the factorial structure of the SCC and its invariance across gender in a sample of 556 Italian adults (28 to 70 years old).

Design/Methodology

The structure of the SCC was investigated in a sub-sample of 191 adults (55% males); its invariance in the remaining 365 participants (43% males).

Results

CFA revealed that a 3-factor solution provided the best fit to the data. The three factors were Consumer (e.g., number of concerts and plays attended), Participant (e.g., activity in cultural or political associations), and Competent User (e.g., use of Internet and other technological devices). The fit indices were adequate (RMSEA = .05, CFI = .95) and better than those of alternative models. Multigroup CFA across gender provided evidence for full configural and metric invariance, partial scalar invariance (with the intercept of one item on books read for pleasure varying across gender), and structural invariance (variance/covariance and means of latent variables): RMSEA = .05, CFI = .94.

Conclusions

The 3-factor structure we identified may allow for a detailed measurement of CC and therefore of SCL.