Compare methods

	Structural Holes Analysis	Homophily Analysis
Field	Sociology	Sociology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1992	1954 (concept); 2001 (synthesis)
Originator	Ronald S. Burt	Lazarsfeld & Merton (concept); McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook (synthesis)
Type	Ego-network measure of brokerage opportunity and constraint	Measurement of similarity-based tie formation
Seminal source	Burt, R. S. (1992). Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition. Harvard University Press. ISBN: 978-0-674-84371-4	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	structural holes, Burt constraint, network constraint analysis, effective size analysis	homophily measurement, assortative mixing analysis, birds-of-a-feather analysis, tie-similarity analysis
Related	5	4
Summary	Structural holes analysis, developed by Ronald Burt, measures the brokerage opportunities available to an actor by examining the gaps — structural holes — between their otherwise disconnected contacts. An actor whose contacts do not know each other bridges non-redundant sources of information and control and is said to be rich in structural holes; an actor whose contacts are all interconnected is constrained. The core measures — network constraint, effective size, and efficiency — quantify how much advantage an ego's network structure confers.	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.