The development and validation of a Digital Social Capital for Learning (DSC-L) scale

Digital social capital (DSC) represents an emerging extension of social capital shaped by digital technology. Understanding how undergraduates leverage digital networks for success in learning requires a precise way to measure their online social resources. Grounded in Putnam’s bonding and bridging framework, this study employed Zhou's (2019) mixed-methods approach to develop and validate the Digital Social Capital for Learning (DSC-L) scale to measure four distinct dimensions: digitally maintained strong and weak ties, and digitally extended homogeneous and heterogeneous ties. The qualitative phase, involving in-depth interviews with 18 undergraduate participants, explored the key dimensions and undergraduates’ perceived roles of tie strength and homophily in their digital social connections for learning, which were crucial for generating comprehensive scale items. Subsequently, the quantitative phase utilized pilot testing and statistical validation with survey data from 408 university students in Hong Kong to empirically examine the scale’s factor structure, reliability, validity, and measurement invariance. Analysis confirmed strong reliability and successfully differentiated these four hypothesized dimensions. The scale also showed measurement invariance across gender and socioeconomic status groups. These findings support the extension of the classic bonding-bridging framework to digital social capital and also present the unique dynamics between tie strength and homophily in digital contexts.