Social (& other) Network Analysis – KM Singapore
I went to two workshops today at KM Singapore to find out as much as I could about Social Network Analysis. The first by Prof Lee Chu Keong from Nanyang Technological University. The second, in the afternoon, was on Business Network Analysis Techniques in Project Management by Graham Durant-Law.
Off the top of my head I can say that I learnt two great words:
Homophily: the tendency for individuals to associate with similar others: ‘Birds of a feather, flock together’.
Propinquity: nearness in place, relation, nature or time.
Some interesting stuff, but a lot to absorb. The data gathering part of SNA seems too labour intensive for my liking. Maybe tools will evolve to help simplify this process. When they do, I’ll have a go.
At the end of all this, the person who’d been sitting next to me leant over and said, ‘very cheem, what?’. Yeah, it was.
October 15th, 2008 at 1:56 pm #Cai
Hi,
I have been a SNA practioner for quite a few years. As a paid consultant I found it almost embarrasing to be paid a high daily rate just to capture and clean up data we collected for SNA projects. When I started up my own company with an ex-colleague one of the first things on our to-do list was to build a SNA survey tool. We have managed to cut the data collection effort by up to 90%, and you get the export data in either Netdraw, Inflow or Excel.
So have a look at http://www.onasurveys.com and let me know what you think. We have quite a following, just Google us.
Cai
http://www.onasurveys.com
October 15th, 2008 at 11:24 pm #Mark
Thanks Cai.
Yeah, data collection is my main concern about SNA. I heard one practitioner saying that he’d spent an hour on each of over a hundred interviews to collect enough data for one SNA. He was doing a PhD and so probably had the time to do it. I don’t have that kind of time on my hands, even though SNA is something I’d like to do. The potential time spent on data collection through interviews is a huge obstacle for me.
Surveys are always an option. But I’m not convinced that surveys alone are the best way to get quality data in any situation, let alone SNA. I’ve tried using surveys, they’re a quick win but they don’t always get to the core of an issue. For me, face-to-face interviews and chats are an opportunity both parties to make sure we’re speaking the same language and share the same understanding of the issues. Unexpected stuff (knowledge, attitudes) comes out of interviews and discussions that surveys don’t seem to capture. I don’t think we’ll ever find a better way to get that kind of depth/range. I’ll give your survey thing a try tho.