link:
http://www.mysocialnetwork.net/blog/481/y1/2006/09/lets_get_delivered.html
The results of our Small University Experiment are in, and several points of interest have emerged from these. Overall, it was striking to see the differences in the rate of success for the two target people in our study: Susan had an 80% success rate, whereas Antonio only had 25%. When making a comparison to Stevenson et al’s study, who carried out a similar Small University Experiment, their results were a 27% success rate, which resembles Antonio’s success rate and also Milgram and Korte’s (22%), more than Susan’s.
The number of total mean links was different as well: Susan’s 3.25 links and Antonio’s was 4.5 links (Stevenson et al only provide the number for completed chains). Stevenson et al say that “more chains are likely to successfully reach their target in SW studies in organizations as compared to the larger society” (5). Could it be said that the Education School is considered an organization, given its smaller size and relative “isolation”, whereas the Medical School would be “the larger society”, which would partially explain the differences in success rate?
Another point that Stevenson et al make is that “upper-class students were more involved in the completed chains” (6). Our results show a similar patter: except for g23, whose success involved freshmen, mostly upperclassmen were involved in the experiment as a whole, for both successful and unsuccessful chains as well. As the authors mention, this could speak to the relative isolation of freshmen from the rest of the university: this fact is especially pronounced in our case since our experiment was carried out during the Fall semester, a period in which freshmen are still trying to adjust to the new life in college (whereas the Stevenson et al study was conducted in the Spring).
The authors’ second hypothesis states that “folders are more likely to be passed within a class than between classes and occupational groups in a university” (3), which was supported by their results. However, the same pattern could not be seen in our data: there was no real “hierarchy of student communication links” (6), since in general, we passed it to people in our same year, ~40% for both Antonio and Susan, lower classes, ~30% for Antonio, 60% for Susan, and higher classes, ~30% for Antonio. Thus, it would seem that, in terms of class and occupational groups, our results go against this type of homophily and McPherson et al. On the other hand, our results are in line with Milgram’s finding that there is occupational similarity between alters and the target.
However, our results and Stevenson et al’s do agree in that the folder tended to reside within students until it was passed to graduate students, staff or faculty members, followed by the target. There was no regression in terms of hierarchical status. Everett says that “homophily and effective communication breed each other” (306); thus it makes sense that, students, who are homophilous in terms of occupational status, would have kept the folders among themselves to ensure that the folder would reach a faculty, graduate or staff member adequately and not have to regress to the students, since these two groups would have a harder time communicating effectively based on their occupational heterophily. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any data explaining what characteristics these gatekeepers had since there is no pattern to be detected in terms of years at Penn, school, department nor gender.
There were also some interesting similarities and differences between the results of our own targets. In the case of Susan, a high percentage of the (completed) last intermediate links shared school: 75%, 12.5% shared the same department and 37.5% shared the same affiliation. In Antonio’s case, 0% shared school, 50% shared the same department and 0% shared affiliation. This marked difference could be explained by the sizes of the schools in which the targets resided. Since the Education School is smaller and contains a less variety of departments, the probability that someone will share departments is higher than the Medical School.
Gender was one aspect in which strong homophily was found. Stevenson et al found a strong homophilous tendency among women undergraduates: “6 out of the 8 paths that originated from undergraduate female students went to other females”. (7). Our date shows a similar patter: not only was the last intermediary for completed chains of the same sex in 87.5% cases for Susan, and 100% for Antonio, but also, in the total percentage of transfers to same gender, Susan’s binder went through members of the same gender in 85.7% of the links and for Antonio, it was 50% of the links. Also, it is interesting to see that, even if the majority of starters were women, depending on the target person, the proportion of members of the same gender adjusted to the target person. For example, for Susan, almost everyone was a female, whereas for Antonio, we see a higher presence of males than in Susan’s case. However, as addressed in my blog for part I, this tendency can just be a result of the fact that the Education school has a higher number of women than men, whereas the Medical school is more balanced in its proportions, instead of being a consequence of homophily. Therefore, it would seem that, unlike Stevenson who said that “women relied more on homophilous ties to pass folders compared to men” (8), the gender homophily is more based upon the sex of the target, like Milgram had stated.
From the data that is available, it seems that for Susan, most of the completed binders used a moderate, strong, or very strong tie strength as their 2nd alter. Only 2/8 (25%) chose a weak and very weak tie. This preference for stronger tie strengths may be, as stated on part I, due to the fact that strong ties may feel more responsibility towards and task, and thus make an extra effort to make sure to not only deliver the binder to the next person, but to also think and pick the next alter because s/he was thought to be helpful, instead of just randomly choosing someone, like McPherson et al say. Further evidence is presented from the fact that, from those uncompleted chains for both Antonio and Susan, 100% of the weak ties only made it to one link from the starting alter, whereas 4/6, 66.6%, of the strong/moderate ties made it further than 1 tie. It was unfortunate that Antonio’s data for the tie strength for the 2nd alters was missing. However, as for uncompleted folders, there was a mixture of weak and moderate/strong ties, but even in this case, there seemed to be a preference for the latter.
One of the hypothesis that I brought up on my first blog dealt with the target’s race and how this could have potentially affected (or not) the success of the binder reaching them. However, since there is not information available as to the race/ethnicity of the intermediaries nor the starters, this aspect could not be analyzed.
As hypothesized in the first blog, the binders that were completed were mostly transferred to the target through someone in the same affiliation/department. Only 3/10 (30%) of them weren’t transmitted through someone from the same school as the target. As for the hierarchical transition that was initially predicted, I was surprised to find that it wasn’t the case in which there was a status descent, as Milgram and Korte’s study had stated. There were transfers from students, staff and faculty members, with slightly more student transfers that then latter two groups. Moreover, the hypothesis that people who had been longer at the Penn community would be more likely to make the deliveries wasn’t sustained either, since the length of time of the last alters varied considerably, even within people of the same affiliation.
Despite Milgram’s finding that there were individuals in one’s network that played the role of “principal point[s] of mediation between [one] and a larger world” (66), our data does not support this; there doesn’t seem to be any “funneling effect” (Korte and Milgram, 104). There was only one person, June C, present in Susan’s chains of binder, who delivered two folders to her. Since there is no further information about her, it is hard to determine the reason why she delivered two out of the eight binders that reached Susan.
There are several explanations for the failures of some of the binders. As Killworth et al state in their article, people are very inaccurate when choosing the right intermediate links. This may have led to some erroneous choices, which, in the case of Antonio who is part of a larger school, could have decided the folder’s success. Another cause might have been the fact that, since people are busy, the fact that there wasn’t anything rewarding for them, especially those in the latter part of the chain, might have been an extra challenge in the success. This is especially true for weak ties, since the delivery of a folder does take up time, and more importantly, individuals have to get together in order to pass the folder along: this might have been a turn off for those links who thought about passing the folder to a weak tie. Furthermore, the fact that undergraduates don’t have access to staff, faculty or graduate students that readily might have been a problem, especially if these were weak ties. This might have helped if facebook could have been used to contact these possible alters. Ellison et al found that undergraduate students use facebook heavily as means of keeping in touch and communicating with weak ties. Since the instructions only allowed contact and passing of the binder with people that one somewhat already knew (since there should have been several conversations out of the classroom with these individuals, and Ellison et al found that facebook is not good to initiate new conversations and create ties with strangers), the use of facebook could have been potentially beneficial for students when trying to make initial contact and/or to schedule a meeting. However, since this hadn’t been an available option, this could be an explanation as to why so many binders died with students in Antonio’s case.
Several causes for the success of binders can be accounted for as well. To begin with, the fact that starters were upperclassmen could have aided in the success since upperclassmen tend to know more people around campus, including both strong and weak ties, which according to Granovetter and Burt, can serve as useful information sources. This is further supported by the fact that the only two folders that reached Antonio were started by the super-seniors in our class; if Antonio was a hard to reach target, it would make sense that, under this line of thought, super-seniors would be the ones to know more people who could help reach him.
As for the success of my own binder, one reason that could explain this could be the fact that, knowing Killworth et al’s findings, I made a conscious decision to find someone who was a strong tie, since I wanted the person to make an extra effort in delivering the folder and giving the choice of the 3rd alter some thought, as McPherson et al have stated, as well as someone who knew someone within the School of Education. Moreover, the 3rd alter’s status as a student within the Education school might have been of potential benefit since Susan is an assistant faculty member, which means that she might have taught classes that are smaller in nature compared to big lectures, and thus gotten to know some of her students better. Furthermore, as Milgram noted on his study, “participants were three times as likely to send the folder on to someone of the same sex as to someone of the opposite sex” (65), and this is shown with my data: all five alters females, which could have enhanced the chances of the folder reaching Susan.