Doing Social Network Research: Network-based Research Design for Social Scientists

Are you struggling to design your social network research? Are you looking for a book that covers more than social network analysis?

If so, this is the book for you! With straight-forward guidance on research design and data collection, as well as social network analysis, this book takes you start to finish through the whole process of doing network research. Open the book and you′ll find practical, ′how to′ advice and worked examples relevant to PhD students and researchers from across the social and behavioural sciences.

The book covers:

• Fundamental network concepts and theories
• Research questions and study design
• Social systems and data structures
• Network observation and measurement
• Methods for data collection
• Ethical issues for social network research
• Network visualization
• Methods for social network analysis
• Drawing conclusions from social network results

This is a perfect guide for all students and researchers looking to do empirical social network research.

Garry Robins is Professor in the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He has won research awards from the Psychometric Society and the American Psychological Association, and is a past winner of the Freeman Award for the scientific study of social structure. He is co-editor of the journal Network Science, a member of the Board of the International Network for Social Network Analysis, and former editor of the Journal of Social Structure. His research has been centred on the development of exponential random graph models for social networks, as well as a wide range of empirical and applied social network studies from cattle herding to criminal networks, from drug-sharing to environmental management, from little data to Big Data.