Compare methods

	Homophily Analysis	Dyadic Analysis
Field	Sociology	Sociology
Family	Process / pipeline	Regression model
Year of origin	1954 (concept); 2001 (synthesis)	1981
Originator	Lazarsfeld & Merton (concept); McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook (synthesis)	Holland & Leinhardt (p1); Kenny (Social Relations Model)
Type	Measurement of similarity-based tie formation	Analysis of the dyad as the unit, decomposing relational effects
Seminal source	McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a feather: homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, 415–444.	Holland, P. W., & Leinhardt, S. (1981). An exponential family of probability distributions for directed graphs. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 76(373), 33–50.
Aliases	homophily measurement, assortative mixing analysis, birds-of-a-feather analysis, tie-similarity analysis	dyad analysis, dyadic data analysis, social relations model, dyad census
Related	4	4
Summary	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.	Dyadic analysis treats the dyad — the pair of actors and the relation between them — as the unit of analysis, separating the relational outcome into what each actor brings to all their relationships and what is unique to the specific pair. It spans the descriptive dyad census of network analysis and statistical frameworks such as Holland and Leinhardt's p1 model and Kenny's Social Relations Model, all of which respect the structural non-independence inherent in relational data.