Stochastic Actor-Oriented Model

The stochastic actor-oriented model (SAOM), implemented in the SIENA software, is a framework for analyzing the dynamics of social networks observed at two or more time points. It treats observed network panels as snapshots of an unobserved continuous-time process in which actors, at stochastically timed moments, evaluate their local network and decide whether to create, maintain, or drop a tie so as to improve their position according to an objective function.