Freeman's EIES Data

Post date: Nov 29, 2011 7:21:54 PM

Overview

Network Dataset

The dataset includes two files - Freeman's_EIES and Freeman's_EIES_Attribute.

Freeman's_EIES includes the following three 32x32 matrices:

    • TIME_1 non-symmetric, valued

  • TIME_2 non-symmetric, valued

  • NUMBER_OF_MESSAGES non-symmetric, valued

Freeman's_EIES_Attribute includes one 32x2 valued matrix

Lin's movie of change over time:

  • mov.wmv

Background

This data arose from an early experiment on computer mediated communication. Fifty academics interested in interdisciplinary research were allowed to contact each other via an Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES). The data collected consisted of all messages sent plus acquaintance relationships at two time periods (collected via a questionnaire).The data includes the 32 actors who completed the study. In addition attribute data on primary discipline and number of citations was recorded. TIME_1 and TIME_2 give the acquaintance information at the beginning and end of the study. This is coded as follows: 4 = close personal fiend, 3= friend, 2= person I've met, 1 = person I've heard of but not met, and 0 = person unknown to me (or no reply). NUMBER_OF MESSAGES is the total number of messages person i sent to j over the entire period of the study. The attribute data gives the number of citations of the actors work in the social science citation index at the beginning of the study together with a discipline code: 1 = Sociology, 2 = Anthropology, 3 = Mathematics/Statistics, 4 = other. This data is used by Wasserman and Faust in their network analysis book.

References

    • Freeman, S C and L C Freeman (1979). The networkers network: A study of the impact of a new communications medium on sociometric structure. Social Science Research Reports No 46. Irvine CA, University of California.

  • Wasserman S and K Faust (1994). Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications.Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.