Conducting Personal Network Research A Practical Guide

Written at an introductory level, and featuring engaging case examples, this book reviews the theory and practice of personal and egocentric network research. This approach offers powerful tools for capturing the impact of overlapping, changing social relationships and contexts on individuals' attitudes and behavior. The authors provide solid guidance on the formulation of research questions; research design; data collection, including decisions about survey modes and sampling frames; the measurement of network composition and structure, including the use of name generators; and statistical modeling, from basic regression techniques to more advanced multilevel and dynamic models. Ethical issues in personal network research are addressed. User-friendly features include boxes on major published studies, end-of-chapter suggestions for further reading, and an appendix describing the main software programs used in the field.

Prologue 1. Introduction What Is This Chapter About? 1.1 Everyone Has a Personal Network 1.2 The Size, Composition, and Structure of Personal Networks 1.3 Egos, Alters, Egocentric Networks, and Sociocentric Networks 1.4 Should I Use Personal Network or Whole Network Analysis? Box: Combining Personal and Whole Networks 1.5 Who Is This Book For? 1.6 Book Overview Chapter Summary 2. How Personal Networks Have Been Used So Far What Is This Chapter About? 2.1 A Brief History of Personal Network Analysis Box: The Bott Hypothesis about Conjugal Roles and Social Networks Box: Clyde Mitchell and the Manchester School Box: The Small World Experiment Box: The East York Studies 2.2 What We Currently Know about Personal Networks 2.3 Theoretical Frameworks for Effects of Personal Networks on Individual Outcomes 2.4 Final Remarks Chapter Summary Further Reading 3. Developing a Research Question What Is This Chapter About? 3.1 Research Questions, Hypotheses, and Objectives 3.2 Outcomes and Social Determinants 3.3 Real or Perceived? 3.4 Some Examples of Questions and Hypotheses in Personal Network Research Chapter Summary Further Reading 4. Getting Started: Selecting a Population, Survey Mode, and Sampling Frames What Is This Chapter About? 4.1 Deciding Whether Personal Network Analysis Is Appropriate 4.2 Selecting a Population Box: Neighborhood Networks and Status Box: Emotional Support and Cognitive Functioning among the Elderly Box: Social Support and Smoking in African American Adults 4.3 The Survey Mode 4.4 The Sampling Frame 4.5 Integration with Larger Surveys 4.6 Identifying Dependent and Explanatory Variables Box: Loneliness and Dementia Box: Personal Networks and Ethnic Identity Chapter Summary Further Reading 5. Questions about the Ego What Is This Chapter About? 5.1 Variables and Research Aims: What Questions to Ask Box: Personal Networks and Social Support: Comparing Two Ethnic Groups in Southern California 5.2 Levels of Measurement Box: Needle-Sharing and Personal Network Correlates 5.3 Wording a Question Chapter Summary Further Reading 6. Delineating Personal Networks: Alter Elicitation What Is This Chapter About? 6.1 What Is a Name Generator? Box: Contact Lists in Phones and Personal Networks 6.2 How Social Ties Are Stored in Memory and How They Are Recalled Box: Probing 6.3 Defining the Boundaries of Personal Networks 6.4 Name Generators for Eliciting Intentional (Nonrandom) Subsets of Alters Box: Multiple Name Generators for Social Support Box: Single- and Multiple-Name Generators 6.5 A Name Generator for Eliciting a Random Subset of Alters 6.6 Additional Qualifiers of the Network Boundary 6.7 Alternative Approaches to Name Generators Box: Keeping Diaries of Contacts during Three Months and Beyond 6.8 Final Remarks Chapter Summary Further Reading 7. Collecting Alter Attributes What Is This Chapter About? 7.1 What Is a Name Interpreter? 7.2 What We Really Know about Alters Box: Alters Real Attributes or the Egos Perception of Their Attributes? 7.3 Questions about the Attributes of Alters 7.4 Questions about Relationships between the Ego and the Alter Box: Tie Strength: Closeness, Duration of Relationship, or Frequency of Contact? Box: Level of Knowing, Duration of Relationship, and Frequency of Contact Box: The Friendship Label 7.5 How Many Questions about Alters? Respondent Burden Box: Ordering Questions about Alters Alterwise or Questionwise Chapter Summary Further Reading 8. Collecting Data about Ties between Alters What Is This Chapter About? 8.1 What Is an Edge Interpreter? 8.2 What We Really Know about AlterAlter Ties 8.3 AlterAlter Prompts Box: Detailed Answer Categories for Smaller Personal Networks 8.4 Respondent Burden Box: The Reliability of Respondents Evaluations of AlterAlter Ties Box: A Different Way to Explore Network Structure and Composition Chapter Summary Further Reading 9. Visualizing Personal Networks What Is This Chapter About? 9.1 Personal Network Visualization: Basic Principles 9.2 Collecting Personal Network Data through Visual Displays 9.3 Network Visualizations as Cues in Qualitative Interviews 9.4 Comparing Personal Networks through Visualizations Chapter Summary Further Reading 10. Measuring Personal Network Characteristics without Generating Names What Is This Chapter About? 10.1 Characteristics of Larger Personal Networks 10.2 Personal Network Size Box: The Random Mixing Assumption in the Network Scale-Up Method 10.3 Social Distance 10.4 Social Capital 10.5 Social Support Chapter Summary Further Reading 11. Analyzing Personal Network Composition and Structure What Is This Chapter About? 11.1 Summarizing Name Interpreters and Edge Interpreters by Respondents 11.2 Creating Simple Compositional Variables from Personal Networks Box: How to Use SPSS for Working with Personal Network Data 11.3 More Advanced Compositional Variables Box: The Power of Homophily 11.4 Creating Simple Structural Variables from Personal Networks Box: To Include or to Exclude Ego? Box: Personality and Personal Network Structure 11.5 Creating Compositional Variables Based on More Than One Attribute 11.6 Creating Variables That Combine Composition and Structure Box: 11.7 Adding Compositional and Structural Variables to the Dataset Chapter Summary Further Reading 12. Statistical Modeling with Personal Network Data: The Level of Egos What Is This Chapter About? 12.1 Personal Network Data and Statistical Modeling 12.2 Predicting Ego-Level Dependent Variables 12.3 Models for Non-Network Dependent Variables Box: Using Personal Network Characteristics to Predict Immigrant Assimilation Box: The Effect of Personal Network Exposure on Reproductive Health Behavior Box: A Longitudinal Analysis of Personal Support Networks and Depression Box: Using Cluster Analysis to Find Types of Immigrants Personal Networks 12.4 Models for Network Dependent Variables Box: Predicting Network Dependent Variables with Generalized Linear Models Chapter Summary Further Reading 13. Statistical Modeling with Personal Network Data: The Level of Alters and Ties What Is This Chapter About? 13.1 Statistical Models for Alters or EgoAlter Ties Box: Testing Theories on Social Support with Hierarchical Models for Personal Networks 13.2 Statistical Models for AlterAlter Ties Box: Modeling AlterAlter Ties to Study Transitivity and Homophily Box: Using Personal Networks to Estimate Whole Network Characteristics through ERGMs Box: Using SAOMs to Examine the Evolution of AlterAlter Ties over Time Chapter Summary Further Reading 14. Ethics in Personal Network Research What Is This Chapter About? 14.1 Personal Network Research and Ethical Dilemmas 14.2 Gaining Consent 14.3 Confidentiality Box: Incentives and Respondent-Driven Sampling 14.4 Social Media and Mobile Phones 14.5 Managing and Publishing Personal Network Data Box: Doing Network Research in Organizational Settings Chapter Summary Further Reading Appendix References

Christopher McCarty, PhD, is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Florida, where he is also Director of the Bureau of Economic and Business Research. He has done research on personal networks since the 1980s and is the developer of EgoNet, the first program for the collection and analysis of personal network data. Dr. McCarty has conducted studies of migration, disasters, substance abuse, homelessness, and racism. Along with his coauthors, he conducted the largest personal network study of migrants to date, using data from Spain and the United States. Miranda J. Lubbers, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona, Spain, and Director of the Research Group on Fundamental and Oriented Anthropology. Dr. Lubbers has investigated personal networks in the area of migration and transnationalism, poverty and livelihood strategies, and social cohesion in Spain. Currently she directs two research projects using personal networks. She also co-organizes a biennial international summer school in Personal Network Analysis. Raffaele Vacca, PhD, is Research Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Florida. Dr. Vacca designed and conducted one of the first personal network surveys among international migrants in Italy. In the past few years he has taught courses and workshops on quantitative methods and statistical software for social network analysis at several international conferences and universities in Europe, the United States, and Latin America. His current interests focus on international migration, health disparities, social networks, and science and scientific collaboration. Jos Luis Molina, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona, Spain. He is also president of the University's Research Ethics Committee. Dr. Molina is an economic anthropologist who studies the emergence of socioeconomic structures such as migrant enclaves and transnational fields. He is interested in mixed-methods approaches combining ethnography and personal network analysis, with a focus on Southeast Europe, and Romania in particular.