Compare methods

	Bogardus Social Distance Scale	Homophily Analysis
Field	Sociology	Sociology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1925	1954 (concept); 2001 (synthesis)
Originator	Emory S. Bogardus (building on Robert E. Park)	Lazarsfeld & Merton (concept); McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook (synthesis)
Type	Cumulative (Guttman-type) attitude scale of willingness for social contact	Measurement of similarity-based tie formation
Seminal source	Bogardus, E. S. (1925). Measuring social distance. Journal of Applied Sociology, 9, 299–308. (Mead Project digital archive, Brock University)	McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a feather: homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, 415–444.
Aliases	Bogardus scale, social distance scale (Bogardus), cumulative social distance scale, Bogardus social distance measure	homophily measurement, assortative mixing analysis, birds-of-a-feather analysis, tie-similarity analysis
Related	5	4
Summary	The Bogardus social distance scale, devised by Emory Bogardus in 1925, measures the degree of acceptance or rejection people feel toward members of other social, ethnic, or national groups. Respondents indicate the closest social relationship they would willingly accept with a target group, across an ordered series ranging from marriage and close friendship through neighbor and coworker down to exclusion from the country. Because the items form a cumulative (Guttman-type) hierarchy, a single score summarizes how much social distance a person places between themselves and each group.	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.