Social Network analysis has now
moved from being a suggestive metaphor to an analytic approach to a
paradigm, with its own theoretical statements, methods, social network
software and researchers. Analysts reason from whole to part; from
structure to relation to individual; from behavior to attitude. They
typically either study whole networks (also known as complete
networks), all of the ties containing specified relations in a
defined population, or personal networks (also known as egocentric
networks), the ties that specified people have, such as their
"personal communities".The distinction between whole/complete networks
and personal/egocentric networks has depended largely on how analysts
were able to gather data. That is, for groups such as companies,
schools, or membership societies, the analyst was expected to have
complete information about who was in the network, all participants
being both potential egos and alters. Personal/egocentric studies were
typically conducted when identities of egos were known, but not their
alters. These studies rely on the egos to provide information about the
identities of alters and there is no expectation that the various egos
or sets of alters will be tied to each other. A snowball network
refers to the idea that the alters identified in an egocentric survey
then become egos themselves and are able in turn to nominate additional
alters. While there are severe logistic limits to conducting snowball
network studies, a method for examining hybrid networks has
recently been developed in which egos in complete networks can nominate
alters otherwise not listed who are then available for all subsequent
egos to see. The hybrid network may be valuable for examining
whole/complete networks that are expected to include important players
beyond those who are formally identified. For example, employees of a
company often work with non-company consultants who may be part of a
network that cannot fully be defined prior to data collection. There is
no assumption that groups are the building blocks of society: the
approach is open to studying less-bounded social systems, from non
local.
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