Week5 Personal Network

When to use Ego Network Analysis

• If your research question is about phenomena of or affecting individual entities across different settings (networks) use the ego-centric approach.
  • E.g., Individual people, organizations, nations, etc.
• If your research question is about different patterns of interaction within defined groups (networks), use the socio-centric approach.
  • E.g., who are the key players in a group? How do ideas diffuse through a group?

Most theories under the rubric of social capital are ego-centric

Size

How many contacts does Ego have?

Degree = 7

Types of personal network data

Composition: Variables that summarize the attributes of alters in a network. (Alter summary file)

• Average age of alters.
• Proportion of alters who are women.
• Proportion of alters that provide emotional support。

Structure: Metrics that summarize structure. (Alter adjacency matrix)

• Number of components.
• Betweenness centralization.
• Subgroups.

Composition and Structure: Variables that capture both.

• E-I index

Composition: Similarity Between Ego & Alter

• Homophily
  We may posit that a relationship exists between some phenomenon and whether or not ego and alters in a network share an attribute
• Selection
  Teens who smoke tend to choose friends who also smoke
• Influence
  Overtime, having a network dominated by people with particular views may lead to one taking on those views

Dissimilarity Between Ego & Alter

• Heterophily
  We may posit that a relationship exists between some phenomenon and a difference between ego and alters along some attribute
• Mentoring tends to be heterophilous with age

Homophily/Heterophily

Krackhardt and Stern’s E-I index
$$\frac{E-I}{E+I}$$

• E is number of ties to members in different groups (external)
• I is number of ties to members of same group (internal)
• Varies between -1 (homophily) and +1 (heterophily)
  • Homophily (-1): #(Internal ties) > #(External ties)
  • Heterophily : #(Internal ties) < #(Externalties)

Heterogeneity

• Similar to homophily, but distinct in that it looks not at similarity to ego, but just among the alters
• Diversity on some attribute maybe provide access to different information, opinions, opportunities, etc.
• Blau’s Heterogeneity Index

Structural Analyses

Ron Burt’s work is particularly and explicitly ego-network based in calculation.

• My opportunities are affected by the connections that exist (or are absent) between those to whom I am connected.

Structural Holes

Basic idea: Lack of ties among alters may benefit ego
Benefits: Autonomy; Control; Information

Burt’s Measures of Structural Holes

• Effective Size
  number of people ego is connected to, minus the redundancy in the network, that is, it reduces to the non-redundant elements of the network
  
• Efficiency
  maximize the number of non-redundant contacts
  Efficiency = (Effective Size) / (Actual Size)
  
• Constraint
  a measure of the extent to which ego is invested in people who are invested in other of ego’s alters
  
  • Constraint is a summary measure that taps the extent to which ego’s connections are to others who are connected to one another.
  • If ego’s boyfriend bowls with her brother and father every Wednesday night, she may be constrained in terms of distancing herself from him, even if they break up.
  • There’s a normative bias in much of the literature that less constraint is good
• Hierarchy
  indicating the extent to which constraint on ego is concentrated in a single alter