Compare methods

	Core-Periphery Analysis	Structural Equivalence
Field	Sociology	Sociology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2000	1971
Originator	Stephen Borgatti & Martin Everett	François Lorrain & Harrison White
Type	Network partition into a dense core and a sparse periphery	Equivalence relation grouping actors with identical tie patterns
Seminal source	Borgatti, S. P., & Everett, M. G. (2000). Models of core/periphery structures. Social Networks, 21(4), 375–395.	Lorrain, F., & White, H. C. (1971). Structural equivalence of individuals in social networks. The Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 1(1), 49–80.
Aliases	core/periphery model, Borgatti-Everett core-periphery, core-periphery structure detection, coreness analysis	structural equivalence analysis, positional equivalence, Euclidean equivalence of actors, equivalence classes
Related	5	5
Summary	Core/periphery analysis partitions a network into a densely interconnected core of actors and a sparse periphery whose members connect to the core but not to one another. Formalized by Borgatti and Everett, the method fits the observed adjacency matrix to an idealized block pattern — a fully connected core block, an empty periphery block, and core–periphery blocks of intermediate density — to test whether and how strongly a network exhibits this canonical mesoscale structure.	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.