Differences of Cultural Capital among students in transition to university: some evidences from a survey

This work reports some evidences from an ad hoc survey addressed to measure the cultural capital of a sample of students entering in the university system. The latent variable `cultural capital ', which students are supposed to possess at a greater or lesser degree, has been here operationalized in three sub-components: (i) built-up by activities made by students themselves, (ii) built up by activities made by students' parents, (iii) transmitted by the level of formal education of students' parents. Each sub-component has been evaluated via students' responses to a battery of items in a questionnaire. Item Response Models and Latent Class Analysis have been adopted in order to provide non arbitrary scale methods and to assess the reliability of the measurement scales.