1. Provide three examples of network studies where a personal network approach is more appropriate than a sociocentric study design. 

2. A researcher decides to limit the number of alters’ ego names to six (alter1, alter2, alter3, and so on). Construct an alter name inter-relator matrix that could be used in a survey to collect alter–alter tie data. 

3. A researcher is interested in doing a study of social capital and its relationship to wealth in cattle in a number of small villages in Northern Kenya using both position and resource generators. Provide some examples of the types of positions and resources that the researcher may want to use in the study. Which of the two approaches might be more appropriate for this ethnographic context? Explain your answer. 

4. Using the E-NET row-wise example file from the chapter “enet_example.txt” open E-NET and click on File|Import and click on Row-Wise selection and click OK. Load the ENET example file and click OK. This is just a simple dataset containing three egos (the attributes for egos should be displayed). Before we can visualize the ego networks we must make certain to filter the Alter-Alter Ties to include only alters that ‘know’ of each other. Go to Alter-Alter Ties and in the box to the upper right (Alter-Alter ties filter criteria) type into the box “knows>0”. This will filter out alter–alter ties in which alters do not know one another. Click on Filter and create the working dataset. To visualize each of the ego networks click on Visualization and the network for one of the egos should be displayed. To move through the visualizations of the ego networks go over to the left or right arrows (upper right) and click to display the next ego network. Go through all three ego networks. How would you describe the differences (or similarities) in network structure across the three networks? We can also compare the structural and compositional characteristics of the ego networks using structural holes and cohesion measures. Go to Analyze|Structural holes and leave the default “None” for each of the tie strength variables and click OK. Which of the three egos has the most social capital according to structural holes theory? 

4a. How would you describe the differences (or similarities) in network structure across the three networks? 

4b. Which of the three egos has the most social capital according to structural holes theory? 

5. For this problem we will use the GSS dataset used in the column-wise example in the chapter (GSS 1985 network data.xlsx). To load the data into ENET go to File|Import and click on Column-Wise and click OK. Load in the GSS dataset and click on Load. To load the variables for ego, ego–alter and alter–alter go to the Auto button on the bottom left and click (this will automatically load the variables). Once the variables are loaded click OK. Now the data are ready for analysis. One interesting question to examine is do the ego networks show more homophily on the basis of sex or race? To exam this go to Analyze|Homophily. In the middle box highlight SEX=SEX and click on the right arrow to the right and move it to the box to the right. Do the same for the RACE=RACE variable. Once loaded click OK. A text output file will open showing the E-I index for sex and race for the entire sample. Also a set of measures were calculated for each ego including the E-I index and the proportion of alters in the ego network of the same sex and race. Does homophily by sex and race in ego networks differ? Also, what is the relationship between the “same proportion” variable and the E-I index for sex and race? 

6. Provide examples of the types of analyses and hypothesis testing you can conduct with the data generated in Problem 5 above.