A note on inferences regarding network subgroups

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Abstract

The evidence presented in Bernard et al. (1980) does not warrant their conclusion. We comment on their lack of concern with the substance of social differentiation in the systems they use as evidence. The substance of social structure is argued to affect the scope, adequacy and power of conclusions drawn from a network analysis and is accordingly a factor to be explicitly considered in justifying those conclusions. With these ideas in mind, our reanaly sis of one system on which good data are available, ostensibly supporting the Bernard et al. conclusion, illustrates how their conclusion regarding network subgroups in that system is unwarranted

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As part of the ongoing work under the Project in Structural Analysis at the Survey Research Center, University of California at Berkeley, work on this note was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (SOC77-22938 and SOC79-25728). The data analysis was accomplished during a leave of absence the senior author spent in the Department of Sociology, State University of New York at Albany where the junior author is currently a graduate student.

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