Compare methods

	Blockmodeling	Homophily Analysis	Structural Equivalence
Field	Sociology	Sociology	Sociology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1976	1954 (concept); 2001 (synthesis)	1971
Originator	Harrison White, Scott Boorman & Ronald Breiger	Lazarsfeld & Merton (concept); McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook (synthesis)	François Lorrain & Harrison White
Type	Network partitioning into positions and a reduced role structure	Measurement of similarity-based tie formation	Equivalence relation grouping actors with identical tie patterns
Seminal source	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.	Lorrain, F., & White, H. C. (1971). Structural equivalence of individuals in social networks. The Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 1(1), 49–80.
Aliases	block modeling, blockmodel analysis, generalized blockmodeling, CONCOR	homophily measurement, assortative mixing analysis, birds-of-a-feather analysis, tie-similarity analysis	structural equivalence analysis, positional equivalence, Euclidean equivalence of actors, equivalence classes
Related	4	4	5
Summary	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.	Structural equivalence identifies actors who occupy the same position in a network because they have identical ties to identical others. Defined by François Lorrain and Harrison White in 1971, it formalizes the idea that two people are interchangeable in the social structure when they relate to exactly the same set of third parties, and it provides the foundation for partitioning networks into positions and building blockmodels.