The social networks surrounding intimate couples provide them with bonding and bridging social capital and have been theorized to be associated with their well-being and relationship quality. These networks are multidimensional, featuring compositional (e.g., the proportion of family members vs. friends) and structural characteristics (e.g., density, degree of overlap between spouses’ networks). Most previous studies of couple networks are based on partners’ global ratings of their network characteristics or network data collected from one member of the dyad. This study presents the analysis of “duocentric networks" or the combined personal networks of both members of a couple, collected from 207 mixed-sex newlywed couples living in low-income neighborhoods of Harris County, TX. We conducted a pattern-centric analysis of compositional and structural features to identify distinct types of couple networks. We identified five qualitatively distinct network types (wife family-focused, husband family-focused, shared friends, wife friend-focused, and extremely disconnected). Couples’ network types were associated with the quality of the relationships between couples and their network contacts (e.g., emotional support) but not with the quality of the couples’ relationship with each other. We argue that duocentric networks provide appropriate data for measuring bonding and bridging capital in couple networks.

This paper investigates the processes involved when newly hired employees need to simultaneously build up and mobilize personal network ties during their organizational socialization. It focuses on the quality of ties at an early formative stage, characterized by the lack of a tie history between actors. Social capital theory would suggest that such nascent ties do not offer optimal channels for the kind and volume of resources that newcomers (need to) rely on during socialization. To better understand how this apparent mismatch between tie quality and resource needs is handled from an ego-centered perspective, the paper analyzes personal network data from 24 newcomers in nine organizations, using an adapted form of Qualitative Structural Analysis. Three tie-level qualities are found to explain how the lack of tie history may be alleviated, circumvented, or compensated. They comprise (a) variants of openness experienced with stronger ties, (b) perceptions of a lowered threshold towards weaker ties, and (c) sources of legitimacy regarding latent ties. Based on these findings, the paper presents an integrated conceptual model to clarify how nascent ties offer channels for network resources during socialization and discusses the need for further research on the role of specific moderators for the investigated processes.

The paper explores the relationship between personality characteristics, sense of community and the structure of personal networks. We collected personal network data from 100 adults, consisting of the information about their 45 alters and ties among them. In addition to the typically used bivariate correlations to analyze the relationship between individual psychological differences and network structure, we propose first the use of typologies of networks and personality and second modified versions of the triadic census in ego-networks. The results show that different personality types tend to occupy a different kind of networks and that newly introduced triadic measures show a relatively higher association with examined psychological attributes than global network measures. Overall, the Psychological Sense of Community showed higher associations with network measures than Big Five personality traits. The former was positively correlated with measures of closed triads among alters, but also with alters embedded in triads with weak ties. Regarding personality traits, Emotional Stability was positively correlated with strong closed triads and with the overall indicator of density. The elaboration of typologies and the census of triads are shown to be effective strategies for the description of personal networks, as well as for the analysis of individual psychological differences.

Name generators (NGs) and position generators (PGs) have been used to measure resources embedded in personal relationships, namely social support and social capital, respectively. Comparisons of these measures adopted NGs that only elicit a small number of alters (max. 5). In this paper we explore whether the measurement of social capital with NGs eliciting larger personal networks (say 15 to 20 alters) gives more comparable results to the PG in terms of occupational prestige. To address this issue, we designed a personal network questionnaire that combined a multiple name generator (MNG) and a PG and enquired about alter characteristics and alter-alter ties for the two sets of nominations simultaneously, allowing their integrated analysis. The questionnaire was implemented in the software EgoNet to collect data from social/environmental entrepreneurs in Spain (N = 30) and Mexico (N = 30. The analysis shows that the two approaches capture mostly non-overlapping sets of personal network members, suggesting that the PG measured in this case available, but not accessed social capital. Remarkably the NG led to a higher average prestige for this occupational group than the PG, but also a lower heterogeneity in prestige. The consequences of using one or another approach and their interpretations are discussed.

We study how people select their health support ties from their broader personal networks, taking into account the interplay of web-based and face-to-face interactions. We focus on users of self-styled Internet communities on eating disorders, often dubbed “pro-ana” and “pro-mia” and widely feared to contribute to maintaining and spreading these disorders. Despite the controversial anti-medical stances of some of them, “ana-mia” websites may channel mutual assistance, advice, and psychological and emotional support, with ultimate benefits for health.

In 2011–12 we fielded an online survey of users of French- and English-language “ana-mia” websites, mapping the composition and structure of their personal networks both online and face-to-face, and their health and eating-related support networks, for two types of health issues. We estimate binary choice models for these data and find that different health needs call for different types of support, embedded in different parts of personal networks. Specifically, online groups provide distinctive sources of help, which partly compensate for perceived shortcomings in healthcare services, although members do not overwhelmingly reject standard health systems and norms. We discuss how web-based groups constitute an important source of social support, and a potential resource for enhanced public health services provision.