Network Analysis in Community Psychology: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Abstract

Highlights Network analysis is ideally suited for community psychology research because it focuses on context.Use of network analysis in community psychology is growing.Network analysis in community psychology has employed some potentially problematic practices.Recommended practices are identified to improve network analysis in community psychology.

A Social Network Analysis of Friendship and Spiritual Support in a Religious Congregation

“…Because we bounded our network as anyone attending a religious service, we use the leader‐reported estimate of average weekly service attendance of 80–100 to estimate how large the network should be. Clearly, our sample of 49 and 34 for friendship and spiritual support garners a response rate (49%–61% for friendship and 34%–42.5% for spiritual support) that is well below the requirement that network data include most, if not almost all, of the actors in the network (Neal & Neal, ). Low response rates are especially problematic when examining network‐wide properties such as density (Neal & Neal, ); thus, in our study we used actor‐based ERGMs that focused more on actors and dyads rather than overall network structure.…”

“…Clearly, our sample of 49 and 34 for friendship and spiritual support garners a response rate (49%–61% for friendship and 34%–42.5% for spiritual support) that is well below the requirement that network data include most, if not almost all, of the actors in the network (Neal & Neal, ). Low response rates are especially problematic when examining network‐wide properties such as density (Neal & Neal, ); thus, in our study we used actor‐based ERGMs that focused more on actors and dyads rather than overall network structure. Although we focused on actors, this approach continues to preserve the social network aspect of the data (popularity, homophily, and entrainment use network information).…”

“…Of note, 10 participants listed more than 10 names (ranging from 11 to 32). Following recommendations in the literature (Marsden, ; Neal & Neal, ), we did not truncate the names for analysis as truncation may alter network structure and results. For the spiritual support network, participants listed an average of 2.47 ( SD = 1.94) names, with a maximum of eight names.…”

“…In order to address this gap, in the current study we use whole social network analysis with a congregation (i.e., where individuals in the same congregation report on their relational links with one another) as this methodology enables us to test hypotheses that directly correspond to social settings theory, consequently deepening our understanding of congregations as a social setting. This methodology also aligns with recommendations from community psychology literature to use relational and social network approaches that locate relationships within a setting, enabling the pursuit of research questions focused on the unique relational information from the social network (Luke, 2005;Neal & Christens, 2014;Neal & Neal, 2017). In particular, we use social network analysis with a congregation to test hypotheses about factors that relate to the presence of a tie between individuals in the congregational network and to examine broader patterns of relational links (Harris, 2014).…”

Ultrasociality and Intersubjectivity

“…Pragmatism has also influenced some community psychologists who have embraced transactional epistemology (e.g., Dokecki, 1978) and ecologically oriented interventions (Bernal & S aez-Santiago, 2006). Furthermore, community psychological research increasingly emphasizes methods that are capable of yielding insights into contexts, collaborations, and aspects of intersubjective reality (e.g., Case, Todd, & Kral, 2014;Gillespie & Cornish, 2010;Langhout, 2003;Neal & Neal, 2017).…”