Course Leader: Dr Mamata Parhi, WISERD at Swansea
Social networks are structures of relations between social actors – e.g., friendship between individuals, collaboration between companies, trade between countries, etc. They are important not only in themselves but also for explaining a variety of actor-dependent characteristics (performance, attitudes, prominence, etc.) Particularly interesting is the two-way influence between relational networks and individual actions and outcomes. The data structure of social networks, where the usual statistical assumption of independent cases is totally implausible, poses special requirements for data analysis.
The training session first provided an introductory overview of Social Network Analysis and its applicability across research areas. It then progressed to include computer classes for hands-on data analysis using the UCINET software program.