Blackwell Reference Online

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Social networks are the interpersonal relationships people have with friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, and others they may come into contact with directly or via media communications. Social →  network analysis is used to understand these social relationships and how they help explain individual and social behavior ( Scott 2000 ; Wasserman & Faust 1994 ). Social networks are studied at multiple levels of analysis including dyadic, group, and system. There are three primary types of network data collection technique: local, partial, and complete ( Morris 2004 ). Local or egocentric techniques are used to measure a person's local social network. For example, a researcher can record the first names of respondents’ closest friends, and then record data about the friends’ socio-demographic characteristics and other attributes. Local networks are amenable to random sampling approaches (→  Sampling, Random ) and can provide data generalizable to larger populations. For example, egocentric network data can be collected to investigate how interpersonal communications about a media campaign might influence its reception. Local or egocentric data are analyzed primarily using standard statistical software (SAS, SPSS, STATA). Partial or snowball techniques start with a set of respondents who provide the names of their social networks, who are in turn enrolled as participants ... log in or subscribe to read full text