(1979). Social Networks and Psychology. Connections, 2 - INSNA

- 9 2 -RESEARCH REPORTSDATA OF MICRO NETWORK STRUCTURES, 1979Walter Bien (Dept. of Psychology, Aachen)The aim of this data collection was to produce information about social network structures in realsmall groups .First, we assume that one knows something about the development of the structure if one wishes to describeit . Second we assume that the basic of the actual behavior of the group memebers is not an objectivestructure . For example the communication frequency rate has little relationship to structure . We considera much more interesting and productive task is to investigate the subjective perception or formation of groupstructure which the people have in their minds - like a cognitive map . This data collection should provideinformation to answer these questions .For a period of seven days we investigated two groups with ten persons each (university students) ina hotel in complete isolation . The students received some money for their cooperation in the investigationand additionally had the opportunity to work for a certificate . Each respondent was asked to give about4000 judgments of his cognitive social structure . This produced about 40,000 units of information fromeach of the groups . These information sets give answers to questions about different kinds of problems ofsocial structure . Some of the problems are the following :Development of the structureThe group members met on the first afternoon, and we assume that there are stable structures by thethird evening, so that this time interval is the period of structural development . Additionally we hadinformation on how long the persons knew each other . (One group had strong differentiated structure before,while the other one had no structure before starting the investigation .) We also noted where the respondentswere sitting on the bus going to the research situation . In the first evening, and on the second morningand evening every person had to rate each of the (19) = 45 relations between every two persons in his groupon a rating scale, and they were asked for their preferences regarding all the persons in his group . (Onthe third day, midday, we repeated the procedure to prove the reliability of the data .)Employing relevant criteriaThree criteria will prove for causal relations of social structure : (i) A situational criterionnication" ; (ii) an emotional criterion "Sympathy" ; (iii) a cognitive criterion "Share of Success" ."Commu-We described these criteria with five verbal statements : "extra ordinary" ; "very" ; "some what" ; "neither. . .nor . . ." ; "not at all" for every person like : The communication with Monika is very good . In this waywe received : 19 (persons) x 3 (criteria) x 5 (statements) = 285 . Every subject was asked to pick thatsentence out of five (name and criteria are constant) which was the most correct description of his (orher) relation to that person . The chosen card was put aside and the type of relation written down . Thisprocedure was repeated for all 20 x 3 = 60 combinations in random sequence . Now the remaining four cardswere to be judged for all 3 x 19 combinations and the chosen card put aside . This pick up procedure wasrepeated until there was only one card left for all 3 x 19 combinations . Every person had to do this procedurethree times .Multitrait- Multimethod StudyOn the fourth day we collected data with four different methods from each person . The methods are :1) symmetric unconditional rating of the 45 bipersonal relations ; 2) ten asymmetric conditional orderingsof nine bipersonal relations ; 3) symq~etric unconditional ordering of the 45 bipersonal relations ; 4) pickone of the two relations about all ( ~) = 990 pair of bipersonal relations for two criteria "sympathy" and"Communication"RelevanceOn the fifth day we asked every person how relevant the three criteria "sympathy", "communication", and"Share of success" 1) for describing social structures are ; 2) for describing the preferences for everymember of his group are ; 3) for describing every bipersonal relation in his group are .