I'd like to call your attention to a paper that I hope may be of interest and use to
members of this research community, entitled "Validity issues in the use of social
network analysis with digital trace data", by two of my students, James Howison and
Andrea Wiggins, and me. The paper appeared in the Journal of the Association for
Information Systems, a journal that I expect few of you regularly follow, so I thought an
email might help bridge the gap.
In the paper we argue that data obtained from online systems, e.g., mailing lists, wiki
and the like, are different in important ways from the typical data of SNA, but that the
implications of these differences for the validity of research are not always fully
appreciated. For example, in contrast to a cross-sectional survey, data from systems often
record events that happened over time that have to be collapsed to create a network.
However, doing so may create apparent connections in the network that don't occur in
the data. We provide a set of suggestions for using such data in SNA studies (and for
reviewing papers that use such data). The abstract is included below.
The official URL for the paper is
http://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/vol12/iss12/2/. If
you're not a subscriber, I'd be happy to mail you a copy or you can find a
preprint at
http://crowston.syr.edu/content/validity-issues-use-social-network-analysis….
Comments on the paper are always welcomed.
Validity issues in the use of social network analysis with digital trace data. JAIS 12(12)
paper 2.
There is an exciting natural match between social network analysis methods and the growth
of data sources produced by social interactions via information technologies, from online
communities to corporate information systems. Information Systems researchers have not
been slow to embrace this combination of method and data. Such systems increasingly
provide "digital trace data" that provide new research opportunities. Yet
digital trace data are substantively different from the survey and interview data for
which network analysis measures and interpretations were originally developed. This paper
examines ten validity issues associated with the combination of data digital trace data
and social network analysis methods, with examples from the IS literature, to provide
recommendations for improving the validity of research using this combination.
Kevin Crowston
Syracuse University Phone: +1 (315) 443-1676
School of Information Studies Fax: +1 (815) 550-2155
348 Hinds Hall Web:
http://crowston.syr.edu/
Syracuse, NY 13244-4100 USA
Kevin Crowston
Syracuse University Phone: +1 (315) 443-1676
School of Information Studies Fax: +1 (815) 550-2155
348 Hinds Hall Web:
http://crowston.syr.edu/
Syracuse, NY 13244-4100 USA