Direct blockmodeling of valued and binary networks: a dichotomization-free approach
Publication date: Available online 25 December 2019Source: Social NetworksAuthor(s): Carl NordlundAbstractA long-standing open problem with direct blockmodeling is that it is explicitly intended for binary, not valued, networks. The underlying dilemma is how empirical valued blocks can be compared with ideal binary blocks, an intrinsic problem in the direct approach where partitions are solely determined through such comparisons. Addressing this dilemma, valued networks have either been dichotomized into binary versions, or novel types of ideal valued blocks have been introduced. Both these workarounds are problematic in t...
Source: Social Networks - December 25, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Social network research in health care settings: Design and data collection
Publication date: Available online 14 December 2019Source: Social NetworksAuthor(s): Chiara Pomare, Janet C. Long, Kate Churruca, Louise A. Ellis, Jeffrey BraithwaiteAbstractSocial network research can help us understand intractable problems central to the challenges of today’s health care system: silo-working, bottlenecks, gaps, poor communication, professional isolation, and other social processes with the propensity to compromise patient safety and quality care. In this paper, we discuss practical and ethical challenges to designing and collecting quality network data faced by health services researchers. The paper de...
Source: Social Networks - December 15, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Farm size shapes friend choice amongst rice producers in China: Some evidence for the theory of network ecology
Publication date: Available online 12 December 2019Source: Social NetworksAuthor(s): Cohen R. SimpsonAbstractMultiple dynamics jointly determine who we befriend, however, researchers have failed to systematically assess which processes matter most under different circumstances. Here I draw on observations around how the demands of paddy rice cultivation shape social interaction to demonstrate that the relative importance of reciprocity, transitivity and generalised exchange to who rice producers choose as friends varies with the amount of agricultural land under their control. In doing so, I use unique data on farm size an...
Source: Social Networks - December 14, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
That’ll move the chains: Collecting network chain data
Publication date: Available online 2 December 2019Source: Social NetworksAuthor(s): Zachary P. Neal, Jennifer Watling NealAbstractAlthough most network studies involve the collection of either ego or whole network data, a smaller subset of work has focused on the collection of network chain data. Collecting network chain data involves collecting a path in an unobserved whole network, and can be useful for capturing phenomena like degrees of separation or search processes. In this paper, we draw on past network chain data collection studies and reviews to propose a design framework for network chain data collection. Next, w...
Source: Social Networks - December 3, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
k-means-based algorithm for blockmodeling linked networks
Publication date: Available online 30 November 2019Source: Social NetworksAuthor(s): Aleš ŽibernaAbstractThe paper presents a k-means-based algorithm for blockmodeling linked networks where linked networks are defined as a collection of one-mode and two-mode networks in which units from different one-mode networks are connected through two-mode networks. The reason for this is that a faster algorithm is needed for blockmodeling linked networks that can better scale to larger networks. Examples of linked networks include multilevel networks, dynamic networks, dynamic multilevel networks, and meta-networks. Generalized blo...
Source: Social Networks - November 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: January 2020Source: Social Networks, Volume 60Author(s): (Source: Social Networks)
Source: Social Networks - November 29, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Connecting the dots: implementing and evaluating a network intervention to foster scientific collaboration and productivity
This article presents the design and implementation of a network intervention to foster scientific collaboration at a research university, and describes an experimental framework for rigorous evaluation of the intervention’s impact. Based on social network analysis of publication and grant data, an innovative type of research funding program was developed as a form of alteration of the university’s collaboration network. The intervention consisted in identifying research communities in the network and creating a new collaborative relation between pairs of unconnected researchers in selected communities. The new collabo...
Source: Social Networks - November 27, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Moral bureaucracies and social network research
Publication date: Available online 22 November 2019Source: Social NetworksAuthor(s): José Luis Molina, Stephen P. BorgattiAbstractIn the wake of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), research ethics governance does not just affect the ethical dimensions of social research but also the range of scientific decisions available to researchers. Because of the sensitive status of personal data and the aversion to even minimal risk by what we call “moral bureaucracies”, we are concerned that social network researchers will increasingly limit their research decisions to “safe” options, like reusing anonymi...
Source: Social Networks - November 23, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Re-evaluating standards of human subjects protection for sensitive health data in social media networks
This study addresses ethical questions about conducting health science research using network data from social media platforms. We provide examples of ethically problematic areas related to participant consent, expectation of privacy, and social media networks. Further, to illustrate how researchers can maintain ethical integrity while leveraging social media networks, we describe a study that demonstrates the ability to use social media to identify individuals affected by cancer. We discuss best practices and ethical guidelines for studying social media network data, including data collection, analysis, and reporting. (So...
Source: Social Networks - November 20, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The Emergence and Stability of Groups in Social Networks
Publication date: Available online 18 November 2019Source: Social NetworksAuthor(s): Christoph Stadtfeld, Károly Takács, András VörösAbstractAn important puzzle in social network research is to explain how macro-level structures emerge from micro-level network processes. Explaining the emergence and stability of structural groups in social networks is particularly difficult for two reasons. First, because groups are characterized both by high connectedness within (group cohesion) and lack of connectedness between them (group boundaries). Second, because a large number of theoretical micro-level network processes contr...
Source: Social Networks - November 20, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Whose results are these anyway? Reciprocity and the ethics of “giving back” after social network research
Publication date: Available online 13 November 2019Source: Social NetworksAuthor(s): Paola TubaroAbstractBridging the social networks, field methods and ethics literatures, I make the case that the process of reporting research findings is an ethical issue, and recommend elevating it in the research design. I draw on a reflective account of three research experiences with settings in, respectively, online health communities, economic organizations, and the mainstream media. I proceed in steps, discussing release of personal network results to individual participants, of whole network results to the researched community, an...
Source: Social Networks - November 13, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Discovery, dissemination, and information diversity in networked groups
We present results from a behavioral experiment where groups of twenty networked participants worked on a problem that required them to pool unique information to discover a solution, and then disseminate it to others for adoption. We found that networks comprised of subgroups containing diverse information, which provided many opportunities for local synthesis of information, outperformed those comprised of homogeneous subgroups. Our findings suggest ways the configuration of a group can be altered to improve performance on a task that requires the coordinated discovery and implementation of a solution, illustrating that ...
Source: Social Networks - November 6, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Family separation and refugee mental health–A network perspective
Publication date: Available online 4 November 2019Source: Social NetworksAuthor(s): Lea-Maria LöbelAbstractHow do the structure and relational features of family networks affect refugees’ mental health after migration, particularly when refugees are geographically separated from their family? Using the first wave of the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees, which is representative of the population of refugees who arrived in Germany between 2013 and 2016, this study finds that the size of the nuclear family has a significant positive relationship with refugees’ mental health, whereas family separation has a significant ne...
Source: Social Networks - November 5, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Confidentiality, power relations and evaluation of potential harm in the study of the personal and organizational networks of travel agents in Moscow
Publication date: Available online 5 November 2019Source: Social NetworksAuthor(s): Isidro Maya-Jariego, Deniza Alieva, Daniel HolgadoAbstractNetwork research in organizational contexts faces ethical challenges related to revealing the identity of participants, managing power relations, and managing the interests and potential harms of the different stakeholders. In this article, we review the ethical issues associated with the investigation of the personal and organizational networks of travel agents in Moscow. In our case study, we interviewed 32 tourism agents from Moscow and its region, obtaining information on 45 peop...
Source: Social Networks - November 5, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Key aspects of covert networks data collection: Problems, challenges, and opportunities
This study identifies six aspects of network data collection, namely nodes, ties, attributes, levels, dynamics, and context. Addressing these aspects presents challenges, but also opens theoretical and methodological opportunities. Furthermore, specific issues arise in this research context, stemming from the use of secondary data and the problem of missing data. While each of the issues and challenges has some specific solution in the literature on organized crime and social networks, the main argument of this paper is to try and follow a more systematic and general solution to deal with these issues. To this end, three p...
Source: Social Networks - November 1, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
