Methoden vergleichen

	Positional Analysis	Blockmodeling	Homophily Analysis
Fachgebiet	Sociology	Sociology	Sociology
Familie	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Entstehungsjahr	1976	1976	1954 (concept); 2001 (synthesis)
Urheber	Harrison White, Ronald Burt, and colleagues	Harrison White, Scott Boorman & Ronald Breiger	Lazarsfeld & Merton (concept); McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook (synthesis)
Typ	Framework for identifying network positions and the roles among them	Network partitioning into positions and a reduced role structure	Measurement of similarity-based tie formation
Wegweisende Quelle	Burt, R. S. (1976). Positions in networks. Social Forces, 55(1), 93–122.	White, H. C., Boorman, S. A., & Breiger, R. L. (1976). Social structure from multiple networks. I. Blockmodels of roles and positions. American Journal of Sociology, 81(4), 730–780.	McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a feather: homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, 415–444.
Aliasnamen	role analysis, positional role analysis, network role and position analysis, regular equivalence analysis	block modeling, blockmodel analysis, generalized blockmodeling, CONCOR	homophily measurement, assortative mixing analysis, birds-of-a-feather analysis, tie-similarity analysis
Verwandt	5	4	4
Zusammenfassung	Positional analysis is the network-analytic program that identifies the positions actors occupy — sets of actors equivalent in their relational patterns — and characterizes the system of roles that links those positions. Growing out of Harrison White's structuralism and Ronald Burt's operationalization in the 1970s, it treats the social structure as a small set of positions and the role relations among them, rather than as a collection of individual actors.	Blockmodeling is a family of methods that simplify a social network by partitioning its actors into positions — groups of actors who are equivalent in their pattern of ties — and summarizing the relations between positions as a compact image, or reduced role structure. Introduced by Harrison White, Scott Boorman, and Ronald Breiger in 1976, it shifts attention from individuals to the structural roles they occupy.	Homophily analysis quantifies the tendency of similar individuals to form ties — the principle that 'birds of a feather flock together'. It compares the rate at which people connect with others who share an attribute (race, gender, age, education, attitudes) against what would be expected by chance, distinguishing the homophily that arises merely from group sizes from the genuine, behavior-driven preference for similar others.