Current Research at ISERP
Design and Analysis of "How many X's do you know" Surveys for the Study of Polarization in Social Networks?
by Andrew Gelman (Statistics), Thomas DiPrete (Sociology), Julien Teitler (Social Work), and Tian Zheng (Statistics)
There is a widespread perception that American society is becoming more heterogeneous along social, economic, and political dimensions. This project will develop new survey and analysis methods to measure and study various dimensions of polarization in social networks in the United States. Specifically, the project will extend the theory and practice of "How many X's do you know" surveys as a means of studying over-dispersion of subgroups in the population and of analyzing the relations between social connections and social and political attitudes.
This is an interdisciplinary project involving sociology, political science, and statistics, and the intellectual merit of the project includes the development of new statistical and survey methods, new ways of collecting and analyzing network data, and, through these new data and analyses, new understanding of social and political polarization. Specifically, the project's contributions include: (1) Developing new methods of analyzing "How many X's do you know" surveys, using multilevel regressions so that the properties of a network can be studied in relation to the characteristics of the individuals in the network and subgroups of interest in the population; (2) Developing and improving the design of these surveys, including issues such as the depth of social connections and the choice of groups of known size to use for normalization, and methods for learning about small and moderately-sized subpopulations; and (3) designing, conducting, and analyzing a new survey to study polarization of social and political characteristics and attitudes in the United States.
See Also
- Research grants undertaken by Andrew Gelman
- Featured publications by Andrew Gelman
Funded by National Science Foundation »
