<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
    <channel>
        <title>Connections Feed</title>
        <link>https://reference-global.com/journal/CONNECTIONS</link>
        <description>Reference Global RSS Feed for Connections</description>
        <lastBuildDate>Thu, 22 Oct 2026 23:30:21 GMT</lastBuildDate>
        <docs>https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html</docs>
        <generator>https://github.com/jpmonette/feed</generator>
        <image>
            <title>Connections Feed</title>
            <url>https://paradigm-files.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/CONNECTIONS/cover-image.jpg</url>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/journal/CONNECTIONS</link>
        </image>
        <copyright>All rights reserved 2026, International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA)</copyright>
        <atom:link href="https://reference-global.com/2/rss/journal/CONNECTIONS" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Teaching public/private key signing and encryption in networks]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0012</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0012</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[This activity is designed to cement the basics of public/private key cryptography for under-graduate students. The basics being taught are: the role of the public key and the private key; the operations of encryption and signing; the possibility of a “man-in-the-middle” attack. The class is structured as an adversarial game between two teams trying to exchange messages and a third team trying to intercept that message. The class was conducted with large paper props representing messages, keys and the operations of signing/encryption. The adversarial (but friendly) nature of the game encourages students to better understand the situation and reason about what opportunities and problems occur for each role.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Illustrating the “power” of networks with candy exchange]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0004</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0004</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[This paper describes an activity designed to illustrate the importance of networks and network structure as participants exchange candy with one another. The activity is suitable for 7–17 middle school-aged or older participants with no prior experience in network analysis. It requires a bag of individually wrapped candies and printed materials provided in this paper. During the activity, each participant is assigned a position in an unobserved network and, in a series of rounds, exchanges candy with their network partners. Following the activity, which includes multiple variants involving new players, positions, and resource distributions, discussion focuses on how the network shapes how much candy each participant has at the end. This discussion provides an opportunity to explore three lessons of increasing complexity: local knowledge, structural inequality, and measuring power.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[NotD: The network of the day]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0005</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0005</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[Mapping real-world systems to abstract representations is a fundamental skill in network science, yet many students struggle with this abstraction, especially when it is introduced via formal mathematics. Networks are used in many different fields; however, students often learn network terminology without building an intuition about what these terms mean and represent. We describe Network of the Day (NotD), a simple interactive activity that teaches students to see networks in the world around them. The activity itself requires little to no technical knowledge, allowing students with diverse mathematical backgrounds to engage in critical thinking and abstraction as they consistently think about real systems as networks, not only by mapping physical systems to networks, but also by identifying network structure. We present NotD as an accessible activity for introducing students to networks, one easily implemented in many different classroom settings.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Path lengths, alter networks, and small worlds]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0007</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0007</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[Through individual, group, and class engagement, the following two in-class activities demonstrate basic network concepts of path lengths, alter networks, and small worlds. They also provide the foundations for more complex concepts and measures. The activities are meant for non-computational/non-statistical introductory courses on social networks or for network modules in more general courses (social science, humanities), and for either high school or college undergraduate students. The first activity, Paths and Alter Networks, involves asking an initial person (ego) to name a known person (alter) who might personally know a third person (target) unknown by the initial person, and continues through additional alters, until the target is identified (or not). Over time, it reveals extended alter network paths that are otherwise unknown to ego, provides an example of network data collection, illustrates the small world process, and provides opportunities to generate real-time network data and discuss foundational network concepts. The second activity, Actor Small Worlds, performed within small groups, integrates the small world concept, especially in a very dense actor network, the Oracle of Bacon using IMDb data, and sociograms. It engages individuals by using and discussing their favorite actors and actresses, interacting with an Oracle of Bacon Pilot, and with a Drawer of Sociograms, iteratively developing a sociogram laying out the paths among actors based on common movies. Students interact to better understand central network concepts such as direct and indirect paths, small worlds, and dual-mode/affiliation matrices. This article briefly discusses goals, setup, procedures, lessons, and reflections for each activity.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Leveraging team formation with social networks: The My Dream Team recommendation system]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0009</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0009</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[We introduce My Dream Team (MDT), an interactive web application that uses a recommendation system to help participants assemble teams and learn how social network dynamics influence team formation. The system operationalizes foundational social network principles to illustrate how differences in relational configuration and structural position shape teaming decisions and outcomes. Participants create profiles, report prior relationships, search for potential teammates, and send invitations to form teams. These relationships influence both algorithmic team suggestions and participants’ own choices, allowing participants to observe whether they favor familiar, densely connected contacts or reach across structural boundaries to less embedded contacts. In classroom and workshop activities, MDT serves as a pedagogical tool for exploring how individuals navigate the trade-off between network comfort zones and opportunities afforded by broader, weaker connections. Drawing on more than 30 sessions with over 1,000 participants, we describe how MDT helps participants develop a tangible understanding of network structures and their effects on group composition, information access, and collaborative opportunities. This web application is free, and instructors can configure accounts for their students and participants.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[A classroom network game for simulating epidemics]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0011</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0011</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[This classroom activity was developed to demonstrate how infectious diseases spread through contact networks and how simple models can be used to study epidemics. The lesson is adaptable for courses in biology, health, or mathematics for students ages 10 or older and can be extended to cover more advanced concepts such as contact tracing or simulation modeling with computers. The activity is designed to resemble an agent-based simulation of the susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) model, where the students play the role of the individual agents. Students play a “high five game,” in which students mingle with one another and track their contacts on a notecard. One student is secretly designated as infectious, and each student who comes in contact with an infected classmate also becomes infectious, simulating transmission through contact. Afterward, students graph the number of infectious classmates over time and discuss how the epidemic curve reflects the SIR rules and their contact network. Next, students propose modifications to the game, such as vaccination. The class selects a new rule to add to the game and creates a hypothesis for how the game’s outcome will change. The students play the game again with modified rules. Afterward, students compare the two versions of the game and discuss how new conditions led to new outcomes. By the end of the lesson, students will be able to explain the rules of the SIR model; describe how diseases spread through contact networks; interpret epidemic curves; and design and test hypotheses in a simulation model.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Six degrees of separation: An interactive teaching activity for social networks]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0010</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0010</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[The six degrees of separation (6-DoS) activity is an interactive web-based exercise that enables participants to experience a key concept in social network analysis: cognitive social structures (CSS). Our perception of who knows whom in a network is a powerful enabler of leveraging and contributing to it. In this 3–5-min network-routing activity (30–60 min from setup to debrief), each participant selects a set of contacts and delivers a message to a designated target to whom they are indirectly connected. The message is relayed through intermediaries, mirroring Milgram’s (1967) small-world experiment, which surprisingly showed that short chains of acquaintances connect most individuals. This process illustrates foundational network concepts beyond CSS, including indirect ties, network paths, and how structural positions shape information flow. By engaging in 6-DoS, participants gain an experiential understanding of how their choice of contacts and their network awareness – or lack of it – shapes efficient information seeking and dissemination. The debriefing extends these insights to broader concepts, including the small-world phenomenon, brokerage, redundancy, and communication strategies. 6-DoS is adaptable for diverse educational contexts, from undergraduate and graduate courses in social networks, management, and communication to professional development and corporate onboarding. Because it is easy to set up, requires no specialized equipment, and can be completed quickly, 6-DoS is well-suited to both in-person and virtual environments. By blending playful interaction with conceptual rigor, 6-DoS transforms abstract network concepts into a concrete, shared experience so that learners do not just understand how networks work – they feel it.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Resource allocation as a networked process: An experiential social network analysis game]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0006</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0006</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[This teaching note presents an experiential classroom activity that introduces resource allocation as a networked process rather than a linear mechanism. Students assume roles within a simulated ecosystem and negotiate resources under constraints of legitimacy, mission alignment, and institutional rules. Their interactions generate a relational dataset for analysis using standard social network measures. The activity is adaptable across undergraduate and graduate courses and demonstrates how inequality emerges through cumulative advantage, brokerage, and path dependence. It also highlights how context and institutional constraints shape outcomes and why qualitative interpretation is essential for understanding how and why network ties form.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Teaching social network analysis (SNA) and geographic information systems (GIS) with SNoMaN]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0008</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0008</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[Social network analysis (SNA) and geographic information systems (GIS) are traditionally taught separately, yet research increasingly requires studying geographic influence on social networks, visualizing social networks on maps, and characterizing the geographic properties of social networks. To address the need for interdisciplinary expertise in both SNA and GIS, we developed a pedagogical approach for teaching spatial social network analysis (SSNA) SNoMaN, a free and open-source visual analytics tool called SNoMaN (Social Network Mapping and Analysis). We implemented and evaluated this approach across eight university courses in three countries. In this article, we share a curriculum module we developed based on three progressive “cook-book” lab assignments, informed by the Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIS&amp;T) Body of Knowledge and foundational SNA concepts. We created these materials using a learner-centered design (LCD) approach where students begin with basic tool interaction and visualization, then advance to more diagrammatic, statistical, and algorithmic material. We implemented the module in eight universities in various departments for both undergraduate and graduate levels across four countries. We share instructor feedback and observations regarding their experiences teaching the labs, as well as students’ engagement, reactions, and learning outcomes related to SNA and GIS through SNoMaN. This work offers generalizable lessons and design implications for integrated, interdisciplinary SNA–GIS education and helps codify a three-lab curriculum framework that meaningfully fuses SNA and GIS.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Visualizing the connections between places through agricultural trade networks]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0013</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0013</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[Daily food choices are shaped by complex environmental, economic, historical, and geographic forces that most people rarely consider. Geographic mapping and network analysis offer powerful tools for making these relationships visible and comprehensible to students. This work presents an agricultural trade network visualization activity developed for a lower-level undergraduate general education course on the geography of crops at a large state university. Using publicly available trade data from the Food and Agriculture Organization’s FAOSTAT database and geographic mapping tools in ArcGIS Pro, students construct and analyze ego-centric trade network maps for a crop of their choosing, visualizing the global connections between leading importers and exporters. The activity is grounded in a constructivist pedagogical approach that scaffolds content knowledge and technical mapping skills across five course modules, encouraging students to interrogate their assumptions about global food systems through hands-on engagement with real-world data. Key challenges include introducing students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to network concepts and GIS software, and these are addressed through scaffolded assignments, student autonomy in crop selection, and video-based tutorials. Student reflections reveal meaningful gains in conceptual understanding, particularly regarding the complexity and interdependency of global agricultural trade networks. This work discusses the activity’s design, implementation procedures, grading criteria, and potential adaptations for more advanced audiences, offering insights applicable to instructors beyond this specific course context.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Classroom activities for teaching networks]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0015</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0015</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[This article provides an overview of the special issue on Classroom Activities for Teaching Networks. It summarizes each activity in the issue, with a table highlighting the focal concept and the appropriate audience age and size, to facilitate activity selection by instructors.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Optimizing support: Network churn and the evolution of undergraduate women’s mentorship in STEM]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0003</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0003</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[BackgroundMentorship is critical for retaining women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), yet most research treats mentor networks as static. Social network and developmental network theories suggest networks evolve dynamically in response to mentee characteristics, environmental contexts, and person–environment fit, but few studies have examined the factors associated with network churn (the proportional turnover of mentors over time) in undergraduate STEM contexts. This study explores short-term mentor network churn among undergraduate women in STEM and examines whether developmental, environmental, and person–environment fit factors predict the rate and compositional nature of that churn.MethodsUsing egocentric network data from 184 undergraduate women in STEM across nine universities, churn was calculated between Fall (T1) and Spring (T2) semesters using the formula (Nd + Na)/Nu (Nd = ties dropped, Na = ties added, Nu = unique ties). Multiple regression with robust standard errors examined predictors of churn, including baseline network size, college rank, persistence intentions, major, university, sense of belonging, and communal/agentic goal affordances and mismatch. Compositional shifts in mentor roles were also analyzed.ResultsParticipants exhibited a mean churn of 0.69, indicating substantial turnover. The model explained 36% of variance in churn. Baseline network size (curvilinear), communal goal affordance (curvilinear), and Technology/Computer Science major significantly predicted churn. Compositional analysis revealed a shift toward “professionalization”: ties with graduate students (+64%), professionals (+16%), and faculty (+9%) increased, while peer ties declined.ConclusionHigh churn may reflect adaptive network restructuring rather than instability, though future research is needed. Programs should consider turnover as developmental progression and teach students to actively curate evolving mentor networks.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[The “Nordic Gaming” Dataset]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2025-0006</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2025-0006</guid>
            <pubDate>Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[This article presents attribute and relational data for 427 employees of a state-owned, Nordic gambling and gaming company. All data were collected from August to September 2020 as part of a management consulting project focused on the re-design of physical and organizational space at the company’s headquarters. Attribute data consist of gender, tenure, formal role, place of work, departmental membership, subunit (formally defined units within departments), location (building and story/floor within the building), and response status. Relational data were collected for the formal reporting relationship and three instrumental informal relationships – expertise-seeking, idea-sharing, and information-seeking.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Change agents’ structural roles and reflection on improving student success: Insights from a departmental action team case]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0001</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2026-0001</guid>
            <pubDate>Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[One model to foster institutional change and promote college student success is the Departmental Action Team (DAT) framework, which deploys a small discussion group of departmental faculty, staff, and students to identify challenges and implement solutions unique to their department contexts. There has been a suggestion to measure the within-department discussion network and examine DAT members’ positions in group dynamics that influence collaborative efforts. However, little is known about what can be identified through social network analysis on the structural roles of DAT members in the within-department discussion network and how it can be related to their post-DAT reflection. Using a case of an engineering department at a public urban U.S. university that engaged in a DAT initiative, this study examined the direct ties and brokerage roles of four DAT members across three years by analyzing the within-department discussion network involved in making changes for undergraduate students. Compared to the baseline, DAT members had some increases in centrality and showed more different types of brokerage roles, even though these patterns weakened one year after the end of facilitation. DAT members’ structural roles were aligned with their post-DAT reflections on individual learning on leadership, collaboration, or student success. However, some DAT members also reflected their limited values and resources at the department level. The combination of social network data and interviews is beneficial for future DAT researchers to proactively consider potential members’ structural roles for team formation and strategic facilitation.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[My closest relationship is with “Yur Mama”: Data quality in the CHIP50 ego network module]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2025-0004</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2025-0004</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[Data quality issues including problematic responses from non-human bots, malicious respondents, and uncareful respondents can threaten the validity of online survey-based network data. In this study, we describe how we identified and handled potentially problematic responses in the ego network module of the Civic Health and Institutions Project, a 50 States Survey (CHIP50-NET). Specifically, we identified and excluded 4,282 respondents who named non-agent alters or invalid alters or who provided inconsistent responses (17% of the sample). Excluding these potentially problematic respondents from the CHIP50-NET sample had only modest effects on sample demographics. However, these exclusions did yield a prevalence estimate of an uncommon demographic group (adults who do not want children) that was closer to a recent, external benchmark estimate, providing evidence of the validity of our data cleaning efforts. We conclude with implications and recommendations for using the CHIP50-NET dataset specifically, and for cleaning data when conducting large-scale online network surveys more generally.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[The impact of changing personal relationship dynamics on quality of life throughout the UK COVID-19 lockdowns – a mixed methods study]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2025-0005</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2025-0005</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic resulted in multiple UK-wide lockdowns, which prevented individuals from meeting friends and family outside their confined households. Prior work suggests this sudden change in social relationship dynamics had a negative impact on mental and well-being outcomes throughout the pandemic. The present study aimed to characterise the influence of changing personal relationship dynamics upon change in life satisfaction within the context of the UK lockdowns.MethodA longitudinal survey of two waves was distributed to UK individuals following the first and third UK lockdowns. Changes in personal relationships were operationalised as binary variables, and a life satisfaction index was created using the difference in life satisfaction between waves. Multiple linear regression was used to investigate the association between relationship deterioration, change, or improvement and life satisfaction index, controlling for gender and age. A thematic analysis was conducted on written responses to identify factors that may have impacted change in quality of life throughout the pandemic.ResultsLife satisfaction significantly decreased after the initial 2020 lockdown. Within individual survey waves, we observed significant associations between personal relationship dynamics and life satisfaction. No significant association was observed between relationship dynamics within confinement and life satisfaction index. Qualitative analysis identified ten themes that might have also affected life satisfaction change.ConclusionImproving personal relationships likely only had a minor impact on positive adaptation and overall quality of life during the pandemic. Future studies would benefit from a greater sample size, to allow the study of specific relationships’ impact on quality of life.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Inpatient unit visibility, space use, and social networks of communication]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2025-0003</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2025-0003</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 19 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[Care team communication is fundamental to most healthcare environments, but the dynamic ways that care team workers use space complicate knowing how to best design for communication in hospital spaces. This comparative case study of two inpatient units used floorplan-based measures of visibility, behavior mapping, and social network analysis to gain insight into the relationship of floorplan layout to care team social networks of communication. Greater unit visibility appears to create conditions for copresence that enhance care team communication.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Types of network-based interventions: a conceptual clarification]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2025-0002</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2025-0002</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 19 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[The term “networks” is frequently used in the field of community intervention in a generic or metaphorical way, without necessarily referring to indicators based on graph theory. With the aim of contributing to greater conceptual clarification, in the first part of this article, we review five operational uses of network analysis in community intervention to evaluate social support resources, identify key players, monitor community coalitions, generate participatory dynamics, and improve program implementation. In the second part, we distinguish four uses of networks in the intervention, namely: preparatory, substantive, performative, and translation. I conclude by examining possible lines of research that could arise from the distinction between the use of networks or the modification of networks in the intervention.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Connecting the Dots: Linking Centrality Measures to Peer Perceptions in Elementary School Friendship Networks]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.21307/connections-2019.058</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.21307/connections-2019.058</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 19 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[This study integrates social network analysis (SNA) and peer nomination methods to examine the relationship between social network centrality and peer-nominated social functioning (e.g., “who do you like to play with the most”) in elementary school classrooms. Participants included 473 students (226 boys, 247 girls) from 26 classrooms in Grades 4 and 5. Four centrality measures (degree, betweenness, closeness, and eigenvector) were calculated from friendship nominations and compared with peer nominations for various social reputation indicators. Network analyses revealed consistent positive associations between centrality measures and “Like to Play with Most” nominations, with degree centrality showing the strongest connection. “Like to Play with Least” nominations displayed negative associations, particularly with betweenness and eigenvector centrality. “Leader” and “Admire” emerged as highly influential across networks, suggesting their importance in shaping classroom social dynamics. Shortest path analyses identified direct connections between centrality measures and who children “Like to Play with Most”, while other social reputation variables were often connected through intermediary steps. This study highlights the complex interplay between structural positions in social networks and peer perceptions of social functioning. These findings contribute to a more integrated understanding of children’s social experiences and development. By bridging SNA and child development research, this study provides insights for developing targeted interventions to support children’s social competence and peer relationships. Future research should explore longitudinal dynamics of social networks and reputations, consider additional data sources, and examine cross-cultural applicability. This study opens new avenues for research and practice aimed at fostering positive social and emotional development in elementary school settings.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Revisiting the culture–social structure duality debate through the lens of personal networks]]></title>
            <link>https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/connections-2025-0001</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">/article/10.2478/connections-2025-0001</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 19 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
            <description><![CDATA[In this article, we address a long-standing debate in social science about whether culture or social structure provides the best lens for understanding human behavior and how that scales to the level of social institutions. We argue that the notion of personal networks offers new insights into this culture–social structure dualism. We demonstrate this by examining early human systems based on kinship and complex systems pointing to the research of anthropologists working in southern Africa who created the concept of personal networks as a necessary tool to understand newly emerging social systems under British colonial rule.]]></description>
            <category>ARTICLE</category>
        </item>
    </channel>
</rss>