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14 March 2007
The University of Toronto’s NetLab has been doing some exciting research on how to measure social networks and communication behavior. Their recent conference paper, “Collecting Social Network Data to Study Social Activity-Travel Behavior: An Egocentric Approach,” discusses new methods of collecting data about social network, travel behavior, and the use of communication technologies. This is exciting research because it shows how to effectively measure two important elements of social life – the cognitive dimension of perceiving the existence of social ties, and the behavioral dimension of interaction that actually occurs with social ties. Moreover, this research incorporates multiple types of communication, including communication that occurs in-person, telephone, and email. The advantage of this approach is that rather collecting data about only certain kinds of ties or ways of interacting – such as the General Social Survey’s question about “those with whom you discuss important matters” – measuring both the cognitive and behavioral elements of social ties gives a more comprehensive understanding of the extent to which social life exists in America and how it actually occurs.
Posted by Jeff Boase at March 14, 2007 12:30 AM