Social Network and Consumption in the UK

Introduction
Aims and Objectives
Network Data
Investigators
Links
Social Network Bibliography

Introduction

Social network analysis offers distinctive ways of understanding social relations and actions but has been relatively neglected in the UK compared to the US and Europe. In this project we investigate the role of social networks and social capital in determining the consumption pattern of contemporary British society. We will be analysing network data collected by Savage, Warde and Tampubolon, as part of an earlier ESRC funded project, as well as using existing surveys such as the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to exploit their potential for further network analysis. This project is funded by the ESRC Research Methods Programme.

Aims and Objectives

In this project we aim to:

show the value of network approaches in a study of the determinants of consumption
review UK and international data sets to assess how network methods can be deployed
consider how network methods can be used alongside existing surveys
develop software tools to help applying social network analysis
develop a short training course on social network analysis.

Social Network Data

Many social surveys done in the UK collect qualitative and quantitative information on social networks. The surveys range from the British Household Panel Survey, Youth Lifestyle Survey to the recent Citizen Audit Questionnaire.

Investigators

Mike Savage is Professor of sociology at University of Manchester.
John Scott is Professor of sociology at University of Essex.
Alan Warde is Co-Director of ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition and professor of sociology at University of Manchester.
Gindo Tampubolon is Research Associate at Department of Sociology, University of Manchester.

Links

There is an international society for social network analysts, INSNA. An incomplete list of researchers in this area are given below:

Steve Borgatti from AnalyticTech, author of UCINET.
Vladimir Batagelj and Andrej Mrvar, co-authors of Pajek.
Tom Snijders, professor of methodology and statistics at Groningen.
Barry Wellman at Toronto.
Lin Freeman from UCI and editor of Social Networks.

Softwares developed for social network analysis are many. Probably the most widely used is UCINET from Steve Borgatti and collaborators. For this project, however, we will be using Pajek and R because they are free and powerful. Pajek is a Windows-based package for visualisation and analysis of networks and R (distributed freely under GNU Public Licence) is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. We will also be using the commercial statistical package Stata because of its user base in the social science community and its facility for development of tools.

Social Network Bibliography

A bibliography of concepts, methods and applications of social networks in the sciences from 1940 onward show an increasing use of social networks ideas.

We are going to hold a conference on Promoting social network analysis in Manchester on 21 and 22 October 2004.

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