Preface

Summary

Our goal for this book is to present a review of network analysis methods, a reference work for researchers interested in analyzing relational data, and a text for novice social networkers looking for an overview of the field. Our hope is that this book will help researchers to become aware of the very wide range of social network methods, to understand the theoretical motivations behind these approaches, to appreciate the wealth of social network applications, and to find some guidance in selecting the most appropriate methods for a given research application.

The last decade has seen the publication of several books and edited volumes dealing with aspects of social network theory, application, and method. However, none of these books presents a comprehensive discussion of social network methodology. We hope that this book will fill this gap. The theoretical basis for the network perspective has been extensively outlined in books by Berkowitz (1982) and Burt (1982). Because these provide good theoretical overviews, we will not dwell on theoretical advances in social network research, except as they pertain directly to network methods. In addition, there are several collections of papers that apply network ideas to substantive research problems (Leinhardt 1977; Holland and Leinhardt 1979; Marsden and Lin 1982; Wellman and Berkowitz 1988; Breiger 1990a; Hiramatsu 1990; Weesie and Flap 1990; Wasserman and Galaskiewicz 1994). These collections include foundational works in network analysis and examples of applications from a range of disciplines.