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A Latent Space Network Model for Social Influence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Tracy Sweet  and
Samrachana Adhikari
Tracy Sweet*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
Samrachana Adhikari
Affiliation:
New York University School of Medicine
*
Correspondence should bemade to Tracy Sweet, Department of HumanDevelopment and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, USA. Email: tsweet@umd.edu
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Abstract

Social network data represent interactions and relationships among groups of individuals. One aspect of social interaction is social influence, the idea that beliefs or behaviors change as a result of one’s social network. The purpose of this article is to introduce a new model for social influence, the latent space model for influence, which employs latent space positions so that individuals are affected most by those who are “closest” to them in the latent space. We describe this model along with some of the contexts in which it can be used and explore the operating characteristics using a series of simulation studies. We conclude with an example of teacher advice-seeking networks to show that changes in beliefs about teaching mathematics may be attributed to network influence.

Keywords

social networksnetwork modelslatent space modelsBayesiansocial influence
Type
Theory and Methods
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 85 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 251 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

We would like acknowledge Jim Spillane and the Distributed Leadership Studies at Northwestern University, including the NebraskaMATH study, for the use of their data in this work. We greatly appreciate the help provided by Jim and his colleagues.

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