An Introduction to Social Network Analysis for Personality and Social Psychologists

Abstract

Social network analysis (SNA) is a methodology for studying the connections and behavior of individuals within social groups. Despite its relevance to social and personality psychology, SNA has been underutilized in these fields. We first examine the paucity of SNA research in social and personality journals. Next we describe methodological decisions that must be made before collecting social network data, with benefits and drawbacks for each. We discuss common SNAs and give an overview of software available for SNA. We provide examples from the literature of SNA for both one-mode and two-mode network data. Finally, we make recommendations to researchers considering incorporating SNA into their research.