Cultural knowledge is central to social participation and is particularly relevant for educational research. Based on Bourdieufs concept of capital, 14 items are presented to measure highbrow cultural knowledge in the German general population. These have been tested on a cross-sectional survey with more than 7000 participants. This instrument focuses on highbrow cultural knowledge in literature, classical music, theatre, and visual arts. The evaluations carried out descriptively and utilizing item response theory have shown that the instrument is high quality and can measure cultural capital. In addition to high reliability (ƒ¿ > .80), the values of the generated knowledge score were also approximately normally distributed. Subsequent validity analyses demonstrated that the instrument correlates as expected with other measures, such as educational attainment and social prestige. The existence of slight ceiling effects is not problematic for a representative random sample but should be considered if special and highly educated subpopulations are to be studied.

Keywords
cultural knowledge, IRT, cultural capital, highbrow culture