Models & Inference

SNA Module 4: Badge

The final activity for each learning lab provides space to work with data and to reflect on how the concepts and techniques introduced in each lab might apply to your own research.

To earn a badge for each lab, you are required to respond to a set of prompts for two parts: 

• In Part I, you will reflect on your understanding of key concepts addressed in the case study and essential readings and begin to think about potential next steps for your own study.

• In Part II, you will create a simple data product in R that demonstrates your ability to apply a data analysis technique introduced in this learning lab.

Part I: Reflect and Plan

Use your institutional library, Google Scholar, or search engine of your choice to locate a research article, presentation, or resource that applies social network analysis to an educational context or topic of interest. More specifically, locate a network study that makes use of statistical models to explain or predict an education related process or outcome. You are also welcome to select one of the research papers listed in the essential readings that may have piqued your interest.

1. Provide an APA citation for your selected study.

2. What research questions were the authors of this study trying to address and why did they consider these questions important?

3. What is being modeled to address these questions: ties in complete networks, individual actor attributes, or groups of actors?

4. What procedure was used and what, if any, covariates were included in the models?

5. What were the results of these analyses and were they “statistically significant”? If so, what does mean in a network context?

Think about a network that you are a part of, or may be interested in studying, and answer the following questions:

4. What is a research question that you might ask about this network that a statistical model for networks (e.g. QAP, P*, ERGM, etc.) might help to address?

5. What model would be most appropriate for addressing this question and why?

Part II: Data Product

In our SNA Lab 4 Case Study, we only scratched the surface on the number of network and node attributes properties that can be tested using ERGMs. Take a look at a table of common ergm-terms or type “ergm-terms” into the help menu of the files pane for some additional examples.

Using one of the data sets provided in the data folder, your goal for this lab is to extend the ERGM analysis from our case study by adding a new parameter/term to our model. For example, you may be interested in examining how shared characteristics among school leaders might help explain tie formation, such as gender, level of trust in colleagues, or whether they work at the school or district level.

Alternatively, you may use your own data set to estimate models akin to those we estimated in the guided practice. 

I highly recommend creating a new R or Python script to complete this task. When your code is ready to share, use the appropriate code chunk below to share the all the code necessary to reproduce your analysis and create your data product.

# YOUR FINAL R CODE HERE

# YOUR FINAL Python CODE HERE

Narrative

• WRITE A BRIEF NARRATIVE OF YOUR ANALYSIS HERE

To receive your SNA Badge, you will need to render this document and publish via a method designated by your instructor such as: Quarto Pub, Posit Cloud, RPubs , GitHub Pages, or other methods. Once you have shared a link to you published document with your instructor and they have reviewed your work, you will be provided a physical or digital version of the badge pictured at the top of this document!

If you have any questions about this badge, or run into any technical issues, don’t hesitate to contact your instructor.