Multilevel Models for the Analysis of Communication and Production Networks in Academia

• Activity Number: 417
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Social Statistics Section
• Author(s): Susana Eyheramendy*+ and Carlos Rodriguez and Cristobal Garcia
• Companies: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
• Keywords: social network ; multilevel models ; latent position model

Abstract

Understanding the structure of social networks is a central concern of sociology where researchers try to understand the causes and consequences of the structure of relationships present in large groups of people. In this study we focus on networks from academics at a university.

The aim is to try to identify which features from a ``communication' network can capture the structure of a ``collaboration' network. We implement latent position hierarchical models to the social networks of academics. These models take into account common dependencies of social network data such as: homophily, heterogeneity of the actors and transitivity. We show empirically that the structure of the a ``collaboration' network can be explain by the intensity of the ``communication' network.