I'm currently trying to learn how to use network analysis, as this method of analysis is increasingly used in psychiatry and psychology research. But as the question suggests, I'm very much a frog in the well regarding this topic. When looking for sources online, most would suggest about "use WCGNA", "use r-package," "use bayesian program," or other similar measures.
However, if I look at a glance, most of the tools are mainly used for good visualization. As long as we can define centralized nodes, know the value of r for each two nodes, differentiating direct/indirect correlation, and draw the lines with thickness corresponding to r-value, we should be able to make network analysis without a program.
Is it wrong? Is there any good resources to learn from scratch?
Dear Afkar Aulia,
if I understand correctly, you are a newcomer to Social Network Analysis (SNA) and you are looking for complementary sources such as software / literature (?).
There are many books that provide a good overview on SNA methods while also providing support with different available software packages, eg.:
Wasserman and Faust, 1994, "Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications", Cambridge University Press.
Software Packages for SNA:
- Pajek
- UCINET
Kind regards, Volker
It depends. You can calculate some network measures by hand such as centrality, closeness, betweenness, etc.
However, it involves too much work on calculating it as the number of nodes and/or information on ties increase. Also, there are various models and other measures you may want to use to test some more complicated hypotheses in the near future.
I do not exactly know how much you want to deeply dive into network analyses. However, if your current project is not only for one time single shot, people would recommend you learn how to use R or other statistical packages to do network analysis. It will be a great investment, and those you mentioned are no longer only for visualization, to my best knowledge.
Afkar Aulia
There are many easy to use, even online platforms to draw graph/networks, so you can start with one of them - e.g. https://graphonline.ru/en/
But every and each development/progress is based on taking the present state of technology/knowledge and adding to it your contribution. Wanting to build everything by yourself from scratch is opposite to that and it will not let you reveal all your potential.
Of course, using sophisticated tools such as R, Cytoscape or Gephi won't release you from the obligation to learn the principles of SNA. So learning the theory is a good starting point anyway. Then you should consider to go toward dedicated tools, in my opinion.
Hi Afkar, I don't think there are any quick solutions. If you plan to explore network analysis, I suggest taking the time to learn the theory behind it and a program that can help you reach your goals. Gephi has a user-friendly interface for modelling and analyzing networks, with many online tutorials, blog posts, and a facebook support group to help along the way. https://gephi.org/ https://gephi.org/users/quick-start/ Good luck!
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