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- 98 -fits in a given industry of firms . The extent to which each sector of the American economy is problematicfor obtaining profits in two-digit and four-digit manufacturing industries is estimated from researchlinking industry profits with the form of the pattern of relations defining the industry as a position inthe network of dollar flow transactions given in the 1967 Input-Output Study for the United States . A twostage process is described for sampling firms representative of large corporations involved in Americanmanufacturing . Measures of alternative strategies for interlocking across sectors are described . Twoclasses of hypotheses are derived : (1) Firms in an industry should interlock with firms in some othersector in proportion to the extent to which the sector constrains the industry's profits . (2) Controllingfor production and market differences, the ability of firms in an industry to obtain unusually high profitsreflects their success in creating interlocks with those sectors most problematic for their industry'sprofits .Abstracts form SOCIOLOGICAL METHODS AND RESEARCHNetwork Analysis, edited by Ronald S . Burt .7 (No . 2) (November, 1978) . Special Issue on AppliedBurt, Ronald S . (Sociology, U . California-Berkeley) "Applied Network Analysis : An Overview .""Manuscripts have been solicited for this collection so as to represent six modes of network analysiscurrently popular in the social sciences . The collection will hopefully expose the range of practicalissues relevant to applied network analysis . The six modes of network analysis are distinguished by twoparameters ; (1) the level of aggregation of actors - individuals versus subgroups within a system versuswhole systems, and (2) the approach taken to linkages between actors - the relational approach versus thepositional approach . The relational approach is typified by traditional sociometry in its focus on therelations between actors . Subgroups within this approach are 'cliques .' Actors are aggregated into aclique to the extent that the actors are connected to one another by intense relations . The positionalapproach focuses on the pattern of relations in which an actor is involved . All an actor's relations toand from other actors in a system define the actor's position in the system . In terms of academictradition, the positional approach is associated with social stratification ; positions operationalizingstatuses and role-sets . Subgroups within this approach are 'statuses' or 'jointly occupied positions .'Actors are combined into a single position to the extent that they have identical patterns of relationswith other actors in a system . Such actors are 'structurally equivalent' to one another ." (excerpted fromarticle ; for full text, see Connections 1 (3) : 9-12) .McCaZZister, Lynne and Claude S . Fischer (Sociology, U . California-Berkeley) "A Procedure for SurveyingPersonal Networks"The application of network analysis to certain issues in sociology requires measurement of individuals'personal networks . These issues generally involve the impact of structural locations on persons' sociallives . One such case is the Northern California Community Study of the personal consequences of residentialenvironments . This article describes and illustrates the methodology we have developed for studyingpersonal networks by mass survey . It reviews the conceptual problems in network definition and measurement,assesses earlier efforts, presents our technique, and illustrates its applications .Lin, Nan (Sociology, SUNY-Albany), Paul W. Dayton and Peter Greenwald (New York State Department of Health)"Analyzing the Instrumental Use of Relations in the Context of Social Structure"Employing a variation of the Small World technique for tracing social relations in the context of alarger social structure, the instrumental uses of social relations are examined in terms of the prestigeand types of relations characteristic of participants in the search process . The results show thatsuccessful chains tend to involve participants of higher occupational prestige as the chains progressbefore "dipping" down toward the target prestige level at the last link . Also, the successful chainstend to utilize weak and infrequent social relations rather than strong and frequent social relations .Alba, Richard D . (Sociology, Cornell U .) and Gwen Moore (Sociology, SUNY-Brockport) "Elite Social Circles"We describe a method for locating the denser, or more cohesive, parts of networks . The method startsfrom the identification of cliques, or maximal complete subgraphs . Since there are numerous such subgraphsin most networks, they are then aggregated when they overlap sufficiently . The resulting aggregatedsubgraphs are frequently large, not necessarily disjoint, and comparatively denser regions of thefull network ; frequently, they have the characteristics of social circles . Applied to an interactionnetwork containing nearly 900 individuals from the American Leadership Study, we identify a number ofthese denser regions, most of which are small cliques, based on the shared interests and institutionallocations of their members . One large central circle also results, and we discuss its interpretation interms of integration of the overall network .