Collecting Data on Ego-Centered Social

Networks on the Web

Gašper Koren, Vesna DolničarKatja Lozar Manfreda, Vasja Vehovar,

and Valentina Hlebec

[Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana]

InternetResearch Toronto, 16. october 2003

4.0

Presentation outline

1. Aim of the study

2. Collecting data on ego-centered social

networks

3. Data collection

4. Results

5. Conclusions

6. Further research

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Aim of the study

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To test some relevant methodological issues for collecting data on complex issues with self-administered survey methods (Web Survey):

1. Influence of graphical design

2. Way of collecting data on ‘repeating’

questions

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EGO

Vesna

Gašper

Mat

Val

Mick Vasja

Katja

Network Generator

• Special question for respondent (EGO) to report on his social network (ALTERS)

• In our case: measuring social support

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“From time to time, most people discuss important personal matters with other people, for instance if they have problems at work, at

university, with partner or parents or other similar situations. Who are the people with

whom you discuss personal matters that are important to you?“

(emotional support)

Data collection

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July - October 2001

• RIS – Research on Internet in Slovenia Web Survey • Over 14.000 respondents

Survey I.

August - September 2003

• Special Survey on Social Networks• 300 respondents• some preliminary results will be presented here

Survey II.

Survey I. (2001)

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• 1000 respondents

• 4 different network generators (measuring 4 different types of social support), 1 graphical design

• Ego should answer 11 questions for every listed alter (alter-vise questioning)

Survey II. (2003)

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• 300 respondents

• 1 network generator, 3 different graphical designs (10 n.s., 5 n.s., 1 n.s.)

• 2 ways of collecting data on alters

(alter-vise vs. variable-vise)

Number of listed alters I.

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0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

14%

16%

18%

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Shorter

Longer

Survey I. (2001)• graphical design with 30 name spaces• varying instructions (long vs. short)

Number of listed alters II.

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0

5

10

15

20

25

30

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

30 name spaces

10 name spaces

30 name spaces | 10 name spacesmax 30 13mean 6.4 4.66

Heaping

Number of listed alters III.

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0

5

10

15

20

25

30

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

10 name spaces

5 name spaces10 name spaces | 5 name spaces

max 13 14mean 4.66 4.06

p = 0.1

Heaping

Number of listed alters IV.

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0

5

10

15

20

25

30

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

5 name spaces

1 name space5 name spaces | 1 name spaces

max 14 16mean 4.06 3.15

p = 0.01

Average number of completed name interpreters (Survey I.)

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0

5

10

15

20

25

30

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Ideal line

Average number of completed name interpreters (Survey II.)

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0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

alter-vise

variable-vise

Conclusions

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• Graphical design is highly suggestive!

• Design with one name space per screen has the best outperformance (closest to other survey modes)

• Variable-vise questioning performs better than Alter-vise (however both have high drop-off rate!)

• Web data collection mode can be used for collecting ego-centered data, however one should be aware of all disadvantages of this data collection mode

Further research

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• How-to reduce number of additional questions on alters without reducing qualitiy of collected data

• Time needed for each type of answering questionaitre (Alter-vise vs. Variable-vise)

WebSM

University of LjubljanaFaculty of Social Sciences

http://www.websm.org/

http://www.ris.org/ http://www.fdv.uni-lj.si/

gasper@ris.org

Contact and aditional information