Notes of the general meeting of the 'aandachtsgebied'
Dynamics of Networks and Behaviour on June 13th, 2005.
11:00 – 14:00,
Room 134, Ruppertgebouw, de Uithof / Utrecht.
Time:
Location:
Present: Tom Snijders, Jeroen Weesie, Rense Corten, Davide Barrera, Michael Schweinberger,
Chris Baerveldt, Vincent Buskens, Liesbeth Mercken, Christian Steglich
Absent: Andrea Knecht, Hein de Vries, Marijtje van Duijn
Central to this meeting is the planning for the next (final) year 2005/06 of the agb.
1. Liesbeth reports about her SIENA results. Open discussion of some general topics that
are related to her findings. Topics discussed:
o
counterintuitive interpretation of endowment effects (Christian checks what
software version Liesbeth has been using),
o
choice of transitive triplets count versus shortest-two-paths parameters in model
specification (the latter seems to deliver convergence problems).
2. Announcements
o
Tom: A grant request has been submitted to the European Science Foundation
(ESF). It is aimed to be an international version of our current agb, in which one
project per participating country is allowed. Next to the Groningen project, there
is one more methodological project: Brandes (Germany), and six applied
projects: Lomi (Italy), Lazega (France), Moore (UK), Kirke (Ireland), Stattin
(Sweden), Molina & Maya-Jariego (Spain). Tom will send the basic document to
the agb-members.
o
Tom: We will organise another satellite symposium, preceding next year’s
Vancouver Sunbelt conference. Location will be Seattle/WA.
o
The next SIENA workshop will take place on September 26 (starting 10:30) and
27 (ending 16:00). It is meant to be “internal”, i.e. primarily for agb-members.
One aim of this 2-day meeting is to develop a tutorial and practical guidelines for
working with the software.
o
The next SIENA workshop to which international participants will be invited is
scheduled for January 16-20, 2006.
o
Tom: A student assistant will update the StOCNET manual, which is outdated,
especially in the SIENA part.
o
Christian mentions 3 international collaborations he is currently involved in: (1)
with Pip Pattison and Garry Robins on the co-evolution of “ideal friendship”
constructs and actual friendship networks, (2) with Dean Lusher on the co-
evolution of male dominance attitudes, perception of group norms, and several
networks (power, friendship, popularity, bullying), and (3) with Susan Ennett and
Bob Faris on the co-evolution of tobacco and alcohol use and friendship.
o
Chris announces a non-technical article with Beate Völker on the co-evolution of
delinquency and friendship networks, to appear an a monograph edited by Peter
Carrington. In this context, Tom refers to an (also non-technical) almost-finished
article by Christian, Tom and Patrick West on the co-evolution of music taste,
alcohol consumption and friendship networks. (Will be distributed to the agb.)
3. Planning of next (year’s) meetings. We preliminarily settled on 3 more meetings in 2005,
which are not yet fully fixed (Andrea, Hein: your input is decisive here!):
o
Next meeting at the SIENA workshop: 26/27 September, in Groningen.
o
Following one either on November 11th or November 14th.
o
Last meeting in 2005 on December 19th (assuming that notably Andrea is
available then).
4. Christian reports three results about SIENA models: (1) problems with model
identification (behavioural part), (2) the impact of missing data on parameter estimates,
and (3) negative influence effects, how to interpret them, and how to alternatively
operationalise social influence.
5. Davide reports about his plans for the coming year. There are several ideas about the type
of data that can be analysed in his project (historical, political,…) in the current SIENA
framework, but these data need to be accessed first. For his own data (dissertation to be
defended November 9th in Utrecht!), an extension of SIENA to valued ties (negative,
neutral, positive) is necessary. Tom currently works on such a version.
6. Agenda point “integration of individual plans, joint publications” is postponed.