social networks

Estimating Within-Household Contact Networks from Egocentric Data

Acute respiratory diseases are transmitted over networks of social contacts. Large-scale simulation models are used to predict epidemic dynamics and evaluate the impact of various interventions, but the contact behavior in these models is based on …

Respondent-Driven Sampling: An Assessment of Current Methodology

Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) employs a variant of a link-tracing network sampling strategy to collect data from hard-to-reach populations. By tracing the links in the underlying social network, the process exploits the social structure to expand …

A statnet Tutorial

The statnet suite of R packages contains a wide range of functionality for the statistical analysis of social networks, including the implementation of exponential-family random graph (ERG) models. In this paper we illustrate some of the …

New specifications for exponential random graph models

The most promising class of statistical models for expressing structural properties of social networks observed at one moment in time is the class of exponential random graph models (ERGMs), also known as p* models. The strong point of these models …

Model-Based Clustering for Social Networks

Network models are widely used to represent relations among interacting units or actors. Network data often exhibit transitivity, meaning that two actors that have ties to a third actor are more likely to be tied than actors that do not, homophily by …

New specifications for exponential random graph models

The most promising class of statistical models for expressing structural properties of social networks is the class of Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs), also known as $p^*$ models. The strong point of these models is that they can represent …

Sexual contacts and epidemic thresholds

Distributions of the number of sexual partners reported in surveys show a pronounced skew, with most people having had one or no partners in the past year and a small fraction having had many. Liljeros and colleagues infer from the results of a …

On 'Sexual contacts and epidemic thresholds,' models and inference for Sexual partnership distributions

Recent work has focused attention on statistical inference for the population distribution of the number of sexual partners based on survey data. The characteristics of these distributions are of interest as components of mathematical models for the …

An Assessment of Preferential Attachment as a Mechanism for Human Sexual Network Formation

Recent research into the properties of human sexual–contact networks has suggested that the degree distribution of the contact graph exhibits power–law scaling. One notable property of this power–law scaling is that the epidemic threshold for the …

Interval Estimates for Epidemic Thresholds in Two-Sex Network Models

Epidemic thresholds in network models of heterogeneous populations characterized by highly right-skewed contact distributions can be very small. When the population is above the threshold, an epidemic is inevitable and conventional control measures …