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Structural Effects of Network Sampling Coverage I: Nodes Missing at Random1.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Smith, JA; Moody, J
Published in: Social networks
October 2013

Network measures assume a census of a well-bounded population. This level of coverage is rarely achieved in practice, however, and we have only limited information on the robustness of network measures to incomplete coverage. This paper examines the effect of node-level missingness on 4 classes of network measures: centrality, centralization, topology and homophily across a diverse sample of 12 empirical networks. We use a Monte Carlo simulation process to generate data with known levels of missingness and compare the resulting network scores to their known starting values. As with past studies (Borgatti et al 2006; Kossinets 2006), we find that measurement bias generally increases with more missing data. The exact rate and nature of this increase, however, varies systematically across network measures. For example, betweenness and Bonacich centralization are quite sensitive to missing data while closeness and in-degree are robust. Similarly, while the tau statistic and distance are difficult to capture with missing data, transitivity shows little bias even with very high levels of missingness. The results are also clearly dependent on the features of the network. Larger, more centralized networks are generally more robust to missing data, but this is especially true for centrality and centralization measures. More cohesive networks are robust to missing data when measuring topological features but not when measuring centralization. Overall, the results suggest that missing data may have quite large or quite small effects on network measurement, depending on the type of network and the question being posed.

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Published In

Social networks

DOI

ISSN

0378-8733

Publication Date

October 2013

Volume

35

Issue

4

Related Subject Headings

  • Sociology
  • 4410 Sociology
  • 4401 Anthropology
  • 1608 Sociology
  • 1601 Anthropology
 

Citation

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Smith, J. A., & Moody, J. (2013). Structural Effects of Network Sampling Coverage I: Nodes Missing at Random1.. Social Networks, 35(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2013.09.003
Smith, Jeffrey A., and James Moody. “Structural Effects of Network Sampling Coverage I: Nodes Missing at Random1..” Social Networks 35, no. 4 (October 2013). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2013.09.003.
Smith JA, Moody J. Structural Effects of Network Sampling Coverage I: Nodes Missing at Random1.. Social networks. 2013 Oct;35(4).
Smith, Jeffrey A., and James Moody. “Structural Effects of Network Sampling Coverage I: Nodes Missing at Random1..” Social Networks, vol. 35, no. 4, Oct. 2013. Epmc, doi:10.1016/j.socnet.2013.09.003.
Smith JA, Moody J. Structural Effects of Network Sampling Coverage I: Nodes Missing at Random1.. Social networks. 2013 Oct;35(4).
Journal cover image

Published In

Social networks

DOI

ISSN

0378-8733

Publication Date

October 2013

Volume

35

Issue

4

Related Subject Headings

  • Sociology
  • 4410 Sociology
  • 4401 Anthropology
  • 1608 Sociology
  • 1601 Anthropology