McFarland Daniel A, Moody James, Diehl David, Smith Jeffrey A, Thomas Reuben J
Stanford University.
Duke University.
Am Sociol Rev. 2014 Dec 1;79(6):1088-1121. doi: 10.1177/0003122414554001.
Adolescent societies-whether arising from weak, short-term classroom friendships or from close, long-term friendships-exhibit various levels of network clustering, segregation, and hierarchy. Some are rank-ordered caste systems and others are flat, cliquish worlds. Explaining the source of such structural variation remains a challenge, however, because global network features are generally treated as the agglomeration of micro-level tie-formation mechanisms, namely balance, homophily, and dominance. How do the same micro-mechanisms generate significant variation in global network structures? To answer this question we propose and test a network ecological theory that specifies the ways features of organizational environments moderate the expression of tie-formation processes, thereby generating variability in global network structures across settings. We develop this argument using longitudinal friendship data on schools (Add Health study) and classrooms (Classroom Engagement study), and by extending exponential random graph models to the study of multiple societies over time.
青少年社交圈子——无论是源于脆弱、短期的课堂友谊，还是亲密、长期的友谊——都呈现出不同程度的网络聚类、隔离和层级结构。有些是等级分明的种姓制度，而另一些则是扁平化、小团体林立的世界。然而，解释这种结构差异的根源仍然是一个挑战，因为全球网络特征通常被视为微观层面关系形成机制（即平衡、同质性和支配性）的集合。同样的微观机制是如何在全球网络结构中产生显著差异的呢？为了回答这个问题，我们提出并检验了一种网络生态理论，该理论明确了组织环境特征调节关系形成过程表达的方式，从而在不同环境中产生全球网络结构的变异性。我们利用学校（“青少年健康纵向研究”）和课堂（“课堂参与研究”）的纵向友谊数据，并通过将指数随机图模型扩展到对多个社交圈子随时间变化的研究来阐述这一观点。
