The Small University Study @ UPenn
The Small World Study @ UPenn
In a class of 18 students, 10 of the folders were successfully delivered to their target people. A completion rate of 55.6% is very high in comparison to previous small world studies and to the 27% completion rate found in the Stevenson et. al small world class project. While this is not too surprising, the discrepancy between the success rates of the two targets, is quite alarming: 80% of the completed chains were to Susan Yoon and only 20% to Antonio Polley. This made me ask the question: what factors are likely to make a folder successfully reach its target?
What factors helped a folder delivery succeed?
:::::Tie Strength?:::::
Firstly, I looked at tie strength. Granovetter argues that more people can be reached through weak ties: “whatever is to be diffused can reach a larger number of people, and traverse greater social distance (i.e. path length), when passed through weak ties rather than strong” (1366). Burt would agree and suggest that we hand it off to a weak tie because “the strong relations between people in the network means that each person knows what the other people know, so they will discover the same opportunities at the same time” (74). He adds that “there is no theoretical reason to expect a strong correlation between the strength of a relationship and the information benefits it provides” (85).
To me personally, it seemed very logical, despite what Granovetter and Burt would say, to pass it on to a strong tie. Wellman & Wortley also suggested that “strong ties provide broader support than weaker active ties…many strongly tied network members enjoy helping each other” (566-567). In my Assignment #1 Part 1 blog posting, I said that this “relationship of trust will increase the likelihood of my folder reaching the target because I trust her and can depend on her to participate and complete the task in a timely manner”.
Does trust matter? Burt states that “trust is critical precisely because competition is imperfect…the matter comes down to a question of interpersonal debt. If I do for her, will she for me? There is no general answer. The answer likes in the match between specific people” (72). This seems to be the case with the small world study. In my experience, passing it to a strong tie worked to my benefit, but from the class results, it seems that strong ties aren’t always reliable and trustworthy, and that tie strength may not be a decisive factor in a folder’s chain completion.
SUSAN’S GROUP
*Successful Chains*
Very Weak/Weak: 2/8 (25%)
Moderate: 2/8 (25%)
Strong/Very Strong: 4/8 (50%)
*Unsuccessful Chains*
Very Weak/Weak: 1/2 (50%)
Moderate: 0/2
Strong/Very Strong: 1/2 (50%)
ANTONIO’s GROUP
*Successful Chains*
Very Weak/Weak: 1/6 (20%)
Moderate: 3/6 (50%)
Strong/Very Strong: 2/6 (30%)
*Unsuccessful Chains*
N/A
:::::Gender Homophily?:::::
Secondly, I looked at gender. In my Part 1 blog posting, I hypothesized that “June’s gender increases the probability of it reaching the target” and this was consistent with Milgram’s findings that “participants were three times as likely to send the folder to someone of the same sex as to someone of the opposite sex” (65) and Stevenson et al’s hypothesis that small world folders are more likely to be passed to members of the same sex (hypothesis #4). In Susan’s group, all the starters were female, attempting to reach a female target. 84.6% of the completed transfers were to females and 87.5% of the final transfers were female to female. While this group of results supports the gender hypothesis, it was slightly more varied in Antonio’s group. With this group the percentage of transfers to the same gender was 55.6%, but it is notable that of the completed chains (n=2), 100% 100% of the final transfers shared gender.
In Milgram’s SW study:
Female -->Female : 56/145 (38.6%)
Male --> Male: 58/145 (40%)
Female --> Male: 18/145 (12.4%)
Male --> Female: 13/145 (9.0%)
Both our class and Milgram’s results may highlight two important observations:
1) It is probably more difficult to complete a chain when the “starter” person is of a different gender than that of the target person.
2) Successful chain completion is probably more likely when the final transfer shares the same gender as the target person.
There are some limitations to this since the male starter in Antonio’s group was also unsuccessful in complete the chain to the male target. This may just go to show that gender is not in itself a formula to the success of the chain completion.
Lastly, although it was not examined in our small world study, I think that racial homophily may also play a small role. Stevenson et al argues that “SW studies have shown that those who are culturally and racially similar are more likely to be linked” (3). McPherson et. al’s 2001 article on homophily found that “homophily in race and ethnicity creates the strongest divides in our personal environments” (415). In fact, in Milgram & Korte’s study on acquaintance networks between racial groups, they found that the target race was a significant factor in determining the success of acquaintance chain points. Their results showed that 80% of the incomplete African American target chains never crossed the racial barrier. Although many of the successful chains were not racially homophilious, as I mentioned in the previous assignment, June’s race is an advantage because she is probably more likely to be aware of the communication structures of Asians on Penn’s campus.
:::::Affiliation/School & History at Penn?:::::
One of the most interesting connections of the small world study is of the affiliation/school (student/faculty; SAS, GSE, etc.) and history (years at Penn) and the success of the chain completion.
Affiliation/School
Stevenson et.al hypothesized that small world folders were likely to be passed within rather than between classes and occupational groups in a university because “small world studies in the organizational setting have shown that barriers between professional groups exist and these barriers make it difficult for SW folders to cross these barriers” (2). I initially also had this hypothesis: Susan’s “structural position poses a challenge. Why? Susan is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Education. Not many undergraduate students take classes there or in the building. This limits the number of people I know who could potentially be in contact with her. The student population and class size at the Graduate School of Education is definitely smaller than the other schools, which also is an obstacle.” (Part 1 Blog). The way I overcame that barrier by passing it onto June, who is a student advisor/faculty member. She was accessible to the students yet her position as the director of the Pan Asian American Community House gives her access and familiarity with many different resources and people.
However, with Susan’s group I found that many other starters had also passed it onto someone of a higher occupation/class, so it seems that it may not be too difficult here at Penn to break that barrier. In fact, 5/10 (50% ) of the starters were able to get it to a faculty/staff member right away and 4/5 (80%) of those chains were successful.
Crossing that barrier proved to be necessary because as Stevenson et al hypothesized: “small world folders will converge on faculty and staff before reaching their target”. In fact, for all the completed chains, a faculty member was the final alter. Stevenson et al attributes this to the fact that students recognize that faculty members are “repositories of knowledge about the organization” (3)
Is this linked with success of chain completion? Stevenson et. al found that “completed chains involve participants with higher occupational prestige” (2). As I mentioned in my previous assignment, June, like Lois Weisberg, is a “connector” with many weak ties just steps away (Gladwell). June knows both students, faculty and staff, and according to Milgram, “the larger and more varied the pool of acquaintances a participant can draw on, the greater the opportunity of choosing an effective link” (107). In addition, Milgram also found in his original study that occupational similarity was a factor that increased the chances of having the folder delivered to the target. In my case, June and Susan also have similar educational interests- they both have P.H.D’s in education/psychology/type fields, which may have been a reason for their acquaintanceship.
With Antonio’s group, the results were quite similar. The 2 successful chains were both passed onto someone in the Wistar Institute which was the last or second-to-last alter before reaching the target, Antonio. But yet at the same time, folder G16 manage to get the folder to someone in the school of medicine & the Wistar institute, but was unable to reach the target, which was quite an interesting result.
History (Years at Penn)
In Stevenson et al’s study, “students exhibited a hierarchy of communication with upper-class students never passing folders to lower-class students” (6), but in our studies that was not the case. In Susan’s group, there were really only a couple instances of that happening and most of the time it was from a senior to a junior or a sophomore. With Antonio’s group, both successful cases were passed on from a 5th year to a sophomore. Stevenson et al’s rationale was that the respondents were likely to pass the folders to someone they knew and these connections “are likely to develop as an individual spends more time in the organization” (2). I don’t think that age, or the duration you have been at a place necessarily make you more connected or more aware of the resources available. Freshmen may be at a disadvantage, but with folder G23, it was passed through 2 freshmen and one new GSE student and then reached the target. On the flip side, G16’s chain had 4, 9, 5, 21 years of experience respectively and the folder failed to reach the target person.
Conclusion: Is it a small world (Upenn) after all?
On average, it took between 3.25 links (Susan’s group) and 4.5 links (Antonio’s group) between the starter and the target for completed chains, which is significantly fewer than Milgram’s average of 6 but quite a bit higher than Stevenson et. al’s average of 1.25 links. It is important to note that both our study and Stevenson et. al’s study was only done in a University setting: “small world studies in organizations have shown, given the relatively clear boundaries in organizations, the number of intermediaries between a starter and target is smaller, and more chains are likely to successfully reach their target in SW studies in organizations as compared to larger society”. (4)
It is interesting that for incomplete chains the links were 1 (Susan’s group) and 2.33 (Antonio’s group), suggesting that the majority of the unsuccessful cases died out pretty early in the process. Perhaps this goes to show that in many cases, finding a suitable 2nd alter is very important to the success of the chain completion. While no ONE factor is crucial to the success of the chain completion, there are certainly attributes that would help increase the probability of success such as trust, gender/racial homophily and occupational prestige.
However, it is not surprising that so many cases failed. According to Kilworth et. al, only “a level of accuracy of around 50% is present. This inaccuracy results in small world chains which are 40-50% longer than would be the case if ‘correct’ choices had been consistently made by network members” (94).
Some of the other limitations are illustrated in the Zwijze-Konning & Jong article on data collection. One of the most obvious disadvantages to this study is that response rates are sometimes low and that this may lead to a “systematic bias” in the data (442). With the Small UPenn study, failed folders and missing information gaps within the data made it difficult to analyze the already small sample we have. In addition, although Zwijze-Konning & Jong argue that the small-world technique can help identify gatekeepers and “sociometric stars”, I don’t think our study achieved that. However, I do agree with Stevenson et al that “a small world study can be a useful tool for studying network connections between individuals in organization” (2). It has been an interesting research project and really ties in a lot of the readings and theories we have studied in class so far.