Friendship formation and social influence - homophily in friendship formation - Measurement issues

3 important questions on Friendship formation and social influence - homophily in friendship formation - Measurement issues

What is assortative mixing

Refers to a positive correlation in the personal attributes or characteristics (age, race, ethnicity, education, religion, socio-economic status, physical appearance, etc)  of people who are spcially connected to one another.
Assorative mixing is an empirical measure that simply describes the structure or composition of a social networks. It shows which types of nodes have a higher probablity of being connected to one another

What are the three main reasons why a given social network might exhibit assortative mixing

- homophily: People form a social tie purely because they share a common attribute. You prefer people more because you have common ground with one another.

- opportunity structure: . Same neighbourhood and same school creates an opportunity to meet. Also the group size of networks in which small groups are more likely to form social ties outside the of the group.
- transitivity: the tendency for friends-of-friend to also because friends.

Why does reciprocity and transivity make the measurement of homophily hard?

If a group does have a genuine preference for forming in group ties, then this preference will be amplified by the processes of reciprocity and transitivity

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