Why Study Ego Networks?

[@muskduh]

Thanks for this wonderful presentation!

[@marcoslvsfilho]

Nice videos, they have been helping a lot! Just one question: I intend to study an organization in which I might find about 100 nodes (that's the complete network). In order to make the research executable, I intend to sample it by the criterion: actor's presence in the monthly meetings; and from the formal list of all of it's members (I mean, It's known that not all of the members goes to the meeting and that is a brutal information about the network itself). Then I would run the survey to the "more active ones". Would it be a mistake to take the sample of the active ones as a complete network? I mean, is It possible to treat the most-enacting nodes as the core of the organization as role? My doubt is, more specifically, whether the sampling of a population makes it, necessarily, an Ego-Network? Sorry for the rookie question and thank you very much!

[@JamesCookUMA]

Marcos, I'm so sorry I didn't answer your question at the time. It slipped by me. I agree with you that this doesn't make the network an ego network, since it doesn't start from identifying an ego and then moving out from there. Instead, within the boundaries you've specified (presence in monthly meetings), if you managed to collect complete data it could be called a complete network. Of course, by other standards for membership in the network there would be other boundaries drawn. Hope this is helpful to folks coming by this video.

[@marcoslvs]

@@JamesCookUMA Thx for the reply!

[@JamesCookUMA]

Hi Graeme. What you've generated is a Level 1.5 ego network, and that's certainly one of the possibilities for ego network analysis. See here: www.umasocialmedia.com/socialnetworks/glossary/ego-network/ -- you will have to keep in mind that you're finding out about some people from an ego's-level point of view and finding out about other people only from someone else's point of view. For those alters who aren't part of your original sample frame, you won't necessarily know who all of their contacts are.