Bridging, Bonding, and Maintained Social Capital as Predictors of Psychological Well-Being in a WhatsApp Group

This paper reported part of the findings from a study conducted to understand how participants build and maintain social capital through group communication on WhatsApp. We collected data from 75 participants who were members of a high school WhatsApp group. The participants all graduated from the same high school in 2003, and they currently use WhatsApp to keep in touch. We used QuestionPro; an online survey platform, for data collection. Participants were compensated with mobile phone call credits in the local currency. We tested a single hypothesis to see if bridging, bonding, and maintained social capital in the group are predictive of individual group member’s self-reported measures of psychological well-being based on Ryff & Keyes (1995). Regression result shows that of the three, only bridging social capital is a significant predictor of psychological well-being. This result adds to the findings by Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe (2007).Ope