COMM 481: Social Networks (Fall 2006)

Readings:

Fernandez, Roberto and David Harris. (1992). Social Isolation and the Underclass. Pp. 257-293 in Drugs, Crime, and Social Isolation, edited by Adele Harrell and George Peterson: The Urban Institute.

Marsden, Peter, and Jeanne Hurlbert. (1988). Social Resources and Mobility Outcomes. Social Forces 66:1038-1059.

Administer the survey in the assignment handout to a minimum of 20 people. The survey consists of a small number of demographic questions, a position generator, and a name generator. Half of your interviews must be with people between the age of 18 and 22, the other half must be over the age of 33. Within each age group half of your interviews must be with men, the other half with women.

After completing your surveys analyze and discuss your findings in relation to the course readings. At a minimum, your findings should include a discussion of the following course themes and topics: social support, network size, network density, community, privatization, network diversity, strong ties, weak ties, homophily, the role of new media, and issues of measurement as they pertain to this survey. Some of these topics may be overlapping, you may address them point-by-point or you may integrate them into a more holistic or focused analysis. You may find it helpful to conduct your analysis as a comparison between different survey participates. For example, comparing men and women, young and old, big networks vs. small networks, those with diverse networks vs. those who are less diverse, etc. (there are many possibilities for comparison).

You must provide evidence and references from the course readings to substantiate your findings / conclusions.

Submit your findings in the form of a blog post of 1250-1750 words. Your blog post is due by 1:30pm on December 7. Print your full name and your blog username on the top of each survey, staple them together and hand in to the course instructor at the end of class on December 7.

Note that the occupations listed in the position generator included in this survey are ranked in order of occupational prestige, highest at the top, lowest at the bottom.