Anuška Ferligoj presented at the ANR-Lab Monday open seminar
New scientific advisor of the ANR-Lab prof. dr. Anuška Ferligoj has made a presentation on the topic “Measuring networks: Reliability and Validity” at the Monday open seminar.
On October, 8 scientific supervisor of the ANR-Lab prof. dr. Anuška Ferligoj (PhD, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) has made a presentation on the topic “Measuring networks: Reliability and Validity” at the Monday open seminar of the International laboratory for Applied Network Research.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to measure social networks without measurement error. This problem is too frequently overlooked when it comes to the analysis of network data. Some questions have to be asked. How much of measurement error is therein a certain measurement? What is the quality of the obtained measurements? The measurement quality in survey research is usually estimated by reliability and validity. This implies we need to know which measurement instrument characteristics produce better measurements of network data.
Many times a social network is measured by a survey. Ferligoj, Hlebec and Kogovšek systematically studied the effects of question wording, methods of naming related actors and several other mesurement and actor characteristics on reliability and validity of whole and egocentric network measurement. An overview of the obtained results from this sustained program of research, together with some recent findings of other studies will be presented. Proposals for producing quality social network data was given.
Anuška Ferligoj is a Slovenian mathematician and social sciebtist, working in the field of social network analysis. Her interests include multivariate analysis, social networks (measurement quality and blockmodeling), and survey methodology (reliability and validity of measurement). She is also an editor and member of editorial boards of many international journals (including Journal of Mathematical Sociology and Social Networks). She was awarded the title of Ambassador of Science of the Republic of Slovenia in 1997.
Currently, Anuška is a professor at the Center for Methodology and Informatics at the University of Ljubljana. Since the beginning of the new academic year 2018-2019 prof. Ferligoj is a scientific advisor of the International Laboratory of Applied Network Research and is actively involved to the organization of the Master's program "Applied Statistics with Social Network Analysis".