Social Network Analysis

Social network analysis is a set of procedures-mathematical and graphical techniques-that use indices of relatedness among entities to represent social structures in a compact and systematic manner. There are several general goals of network analysis. The first goal is to represent relationships of interest visually as a network or graph, and to display information in a way that allows the user to see relationships among actors embedded in the overall network. A second goal is to examine basic properties of relationships in a network, such as density, centrality, and prestige. A third goal is to test hypotheses regarding the structure of connections among actors. Social network analysts can examine the effects that relationships have on constraining or enhancing individual behavior or network efficiency. A major advantage of the network approach is that it focuses on the relationships among actors embedded in their social context.