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El Colegio de Sonora
Centro de Estudios en
Gobierno y Asuntos Públicos

Applicability of ERG Models: a hypothetical case



Dr. Luis Alan Navarro Navarro
Centro de Estudios en Gobierno y Asuntos Públicos
El Colegio de Sonora

I wrote this 13 page term paper for an ARL930 class back in 2010. The paper was intended to simulate the data that might be generated on a social network survey of the relationships among a group of irrigators. I consider that it is advisable to run your proposed model on simulated data before conducting the survey.
Survey work is expensive and time consuming, especially for social network data. First, it requires you to approach all the members of a group, this usually leads to a long waiting time to contact and approach the interviewees, additionally in the case or irrigation systems, they used to be busy at the same hours, considering a one-hour interview, there is a limited number of interviews that can be conducted in one day. Second, traditional irrigation systems are almost always linked to remote rural places, implying traveling costs.
Thus, revisiting a community for additional data, because actual data did not fit a statistical model, it is not an option. The wise thing to do is imaging the empirical data that might be generated from the survey (questionnaire). Design an appropriate model (based on the literature reviewed) and run scenarios where the null hypothesis is ruled out, how your ideal database looks like?
As the reader will promptly realize, the irrigation system example is synthetic, nonetheless that a group of irrigators (traditional irrigation systems) is a frequently case of study for social dilemmas, self-organization, and institutional solutions.


Abstract

This paper represents an exploratory research analysis intended to find whether an Exponential Random Graph (ERG) model fits a hypothetical social network (HSN. This HSN forms a graph “G” which mathematically is represented by two subsets G {N, E} where “N” is the number of nodes (actors) N {1,2,3, …, n } and E {1,2,3, …, l } is the number of directed ties (arcs). The adjacency matrix (or Sociomatrix 1) of “G” has binary [ 0, 1 ] off-diagonal entries, where X i, j = 1 if there is a tie i → j from actor “i” to actor “j”, and 0 otherwise. Thus, the HSN is a 20x20 non-symmetric sociomatrix, with row marginals = 5 ∀ "i", and main diagonal (X i, i = 0)not defined but set to 0 by convention. Sociomatrix 1 was manually created resembling egocentric data, where actor (farmer) “i” (called “ego”) was asked to name five other farmers (usually called “alters”) with whom s/he would be willing to collaborate and partner up for a hypothetical (bu possible) project related with the improvement and maintenance of the irrigation system’s infrastructure. Framers were randomly assigned into one out of three categories of an ordinal variable which represents farmer’s socioeconomic status (SES), coded [ 1,2,3 ]from low to high SES, then ties were formed to intentionally match farmer’s SES crating thus homophily ties. Sociomatrix 1 was once randomly permuted to form Sociomatrix 2. We test on both Sociomatrices a single null hypothesis Ho: Irrigation System (IS) users’ willingness to cooperate is less likely to occur within individuals sharing a similar SES (no SES heterophily); Ha: IS user’s willingness to cooperate is more likely to occur within individuals sharing a similar SES (SES homophily).
The goodness of fit of the data to the ERG model proposed provided insights for the analytic potentials of a future empirical social network derived from case studies.

Paper





R code