Perception of Networks

Instructor: Josh Marineau

The perception of social networks is an exciting and growing area of social networks, which is becoming increasingly relevant to social science research. This mini-module will explore cognitive social structures (CSS), or network perceptions, and provide practical information on the data structure and methods available to collect and analyze this type of data. We will focus on some key questions, such as: What is CSS data? What kind of questions can we answer? How is CSS data collected? Once we have data, what can we do with it?

A major portion of the module will focus on exploring actual CSS data in UCINET. We will use a well-known data set to explore and discuss the numerous options that cognitive network data presents to social network analysis. By the end of the module you will understand the basic structure of CSS data and how to collect it, and you will have explored some of the many analysis options in UCINET, such as individual network accuracy.