Block Per, Grund Thomas
Oxford University, Nuffield College, New Road, OX1 1NF, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Institute for Futures Studies, Box 591, Holländargatan 13, 10131 Stockholm, Sweden.
Netw Sci (Camb Univ Press). 2014 Aug;2(2):189-212. doi: 10.1017/nws.2014.17.
Homophily - the tendency for individuals to associate with similar others - is one of the most persistent findings in social network analysis. Its importance is established along the lines of a multitude of sociologically relevant dimensions, e.g. sex, ethnicity and social class. Existing research, however, mostly focuses on one dimension at a time. But people are inherently multidimensional, have many attributes and are members of multiple groups. In this article, we explore such multidimensionality further in the context of network dynamics. Are friendship ties increasingly likely to emerge and persist when individuals have an increasing number of attributes in common? We analyze eleven friendship networks of adolescents, draw on stochastic actor-oriented network models and focus on the interaction of established homophily effects. Our results indicate that main effects for homophily on various dimensions are positive. At the same time, the interaction of these homophily effects is negative. There seems to be a diminishing effect for having more than one attribute in common. We conclude that studies of homophily and friendship formation need to address such multidimensionality further.
同质性——个体倾向于与相似的他人交往——是社会网络分析中最持久的发现之一。其重要性在众多社会学相关维度上得以确立，例如性别、种族和社会阶层。然而，现有研究大多一次只关注一个维度。但人本质上是多维度的，具有许多属性，并且是多个群体的成员。在本文中，我们在网络动态的背景下进一步探讨这种多维度性。当个体拥有越来越多的共同属性时，友谊关系是否越来越有可能出现并持续下去？我们分析了青少年的11个友谊网络，利用面向随机行动者的网络模型，并关注既定同质性效应的相互作用。我们的结果表明，同质性在各个维度上的主要效应是正向的。与此同时，这些同质性效应的相互作用是负向的。拥有多个共同属性似乎存在递减效应。我们得出结论，对同质性和友谊形成的研究需要进一步探讨这种多维度性。
