Applying affiliation social network analysis to understand interfaith groups

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis study applies affiliation social network analysis to understand how interfaith groups provide resources to other community groups and link interfaith group members to resources for local community change. Based on a sample of 88 interfaith groups from across the U.S., affiliation social network analysis pictures show distinct patterns in how interfaith groups share resources with community groups and link members to community resources. Overall, results show how interfaith groups may be empowering community settings that provide resources and link members to other resources in the interest of community change. These findings imply that interfaith groups may be part of the social fabric within communities that hold potential to be partners and contributors of resources to promote community change efforts. Limitations and directions for future research also are discussed. © 2015 Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. on behalf of Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Aplicación del análisis de redes sociales de afiliación para comprender los grupos interreligiososPalabras clave: Grupos interreligiosos Análisis de redes sociales de afiliación Capital social de intermediación Redes sociales r e s u m e n Este estudio se basa en el análisis de redes de afiliación para comprender cómo los grupos interreligiosos proporcionan recursos a otros grupos comunitarios y vinculan a los miembros de los grupos interreligiosos con los recursos de cambio comunitario. Sobre la base de 88 grupos interreligiosos de Estados Unidos, las imágenes del análisis de redes sociales de afiliación muestran diferentes patrones en la manera en que los grupos interreligiosos comparten recursos con los grupos comunitarios y vinculan a sus miembros con los recursos comunitarios. En general, los resultados muestran cómo los grupos interreligiosos pueden empoderar los contextos comunitarios que proporcionan recursos y vinculan a los miembros con otros recursos a favor del cambio comunitario. Los resultados implican que los grupos interreligiosos pueden ser parte del tejido social en comunidad con potencial para ser socios y colaboradores en la promoción del cambio comunitario. También discutimos las limitaciones y las posibilidades de investigación futura.

Interreligious Dialogue Groups Enabling Human Agency

“…The reviewed literature coincides with the relevance of principles such as equality of differences, egalitarian dialogue, cultural intelligence, solidarity, and transformation to positively impact human agency. Although empirical research has examined the benefits of interreligious dialogue groups (Azdajic 2019;Gramstrup 2017;Todd et al 2015;Burgués et al 2016;Mondéjar and Villarejo 2017;Cerchiaro 2019;Ubani 2018;Knitter 2013), the creation of human agency has remained almost unexplored. There is scarce literature and evidence on how and why the implementation of such principles is needed.…”

Network analysis for social and community interventions

“…In consequence, it is particularly relevant in studies of community psychology and in psychosocial interventions. As we show in this monograph, networks allow to detect patterns of collaboration that are not perceived intuitively (Todd et al, 2015), serve to examine the mutual influence of individual community organizations and networks of interorganizational collaboration (Faust et al, 2015;Menger et al, 2015;Rana & Allen, 2015), facilitate the dissemination of evidencebased practices among professionals of the intervention , and are a tool for intervention by themselves (Corlew et al, 2015).…”

“…In this monograph, we collect a number of articles that make innovative contributions to social and community intervention using social network analysis. Following the index of this volume, we read: a study that assesses the impact of collaborative networks of community organizations in implementing effective interventions (Faust, Christens, Sparks, & Hingeldorf, 2015); an application of visualization of large relational databases to improve communication between professionals (Corlew, Keener, Finucane, Brewington, & Nunn-Crichton, 2015); an analysis of affiliation networks that identifies two types of interfaith groups depending on how the organizations exchange resources (Todd, Houston, & Suffrin, 2015); an assessment of the role of strong ties, which are developed across multiple types of relationships, between entities that form a coalition (Menger, Stallones, Cross, Henry, & Chen, 2015); a description of the influence of the Family Violence Councils network in the practice of the organizations that are part of them (Rana & Allen, 2015); a theoretical review of the chains of intermediaries between researchers and professionals of intervention ; and a survey on the variability of personal networks depending on metropolitan mobility (Maya-Jariego & Holgado, 2015).…”

The importance of networking in development co‐operation: A social network analysis‐based evaluation of an international development programme

“…Furthermore, we have shown how the projects have, through collaboration, achieved objectives that would have been impossible on their own. Applying appropriate analysis tools to the network has confirmed that within development networks, social capital is productive (Bagnasco, 2002), and that this productivity is achieved through the actors' interactions around the available network resources (Kadushin, 2004;Todd, Houston, & Suffrin, 2015). Furthermore, we can confirm the validity of analyzing development networks with a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods: combining quantitative data, analyzed through network algorithms to allow the visualization of networks, and qualitative data, to complement the quantitative information and to explain observed dynamics, is a common practice in network-evaluation (Frechtling & Sharp, 1997) that seems to fit well within development co-operation.…”