The characterization of large-scale structural organization of social networks is an important interdisciplinary problem. We show, by using scaling analysis and numerical computation, that the following factors are relevant for models of social networks: the correlation between friendship ties among people and the position of their social groups, as well as the correlation between the positions of different social groups to which a person belongs.

• Received 6 May 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.68.036105