300250 Soziologische Methoden - quantitativ: Introduction into Social Network Analysis (S) (SoSe 2024)

Introduction into Social Network Analysis:

As the title of the seminar suggests, this seminar will provide an introduction to social network analysis. The aim of the seminar is for students to learn how social networks (e.g. friendship networks) are structured and how they can be analyzed using statistical methods.
At the beginning of the seminar, the focus will be on how to visualize social networks, what is behind network measures such as homophily, reciprocity, and transitivity, popularity, and how these can be measured. Further learning objectives of the seminar are methods for the identification of subgroups in social networks such as cliques ("Community Detection"), as well as Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) and Stochastic Actor Based Oriented Models (SAOMs), which aim to explain the process of tie formation in social networks. The focus will be on the concrete application.
The statistical software R will be used during the seminar. Previous knowledge of R is not a prerequisite. However, it is a prerequisite that students have already gained experience in using some statistical software (e.g. SPSS, Stata, Python, R) as well as basic knowledge of statistics (e.g. linear and logistic regression). The seminar will be held in English.

Requirements for participation, required level

-Some knowledge in at least one statistical software (R, Stata, SPSS, Python, etc.)
-Basic knowledge in statistics including linear regression and logistic regression

Bibliography

Borgatti, S. P., Everett, M. G., Johnson, J. C., & Agneessens, F. (2022). Analyzing social networks using R. Sage.
Robins, G. L. (2015). Doing social network research: Network-based research design for social scientists. Doing Social Network Research, 1-280.