Structure in personal networks: Constructing and comparing typologies.

Abstract

A recurrent finding in personal network research is that individual and social outcomes are influenced not just by the kind of people one knows, but also by how those people are connected to each other: that is, by the structure of one's personal network. The different ways in which a person's social contacts know and interact with each other reflect broader variations in personal communities and social structures, and shape patterns and processes of social capital, support, and isolation. This article proposes a method to identify typologies of network structure in large collections of personal networks. The method is illustrated with an application to six datasets collected in widely different circumstances and using various survey instruments. Results are compared with those from another recently introduced method to extract structural typologies of egocentric networks. Findings show that personal network structure can be effectively summarized using just three measures describing results of the Girvan-Newman algorithm for cohesive subgroup detection. Structural typologies can then be extracted through cluster analysis on the three variables, using well-known clustering quality statistics to select the optimal typology. Both typology detection methods considered in the article capture significant variation in personal network structures, but substantial levels of disagreement and cross-classification emerge between them. I discuss differences and similarities between the methods, and potential applications of the proposed typologies to substantive research on a variety of topics, including structures and transformations of personal communities, social support, and social capital.