探索的ネットワーク分析 : 超領域的研究のための標準手順の提案(<特集>研究・技術計画/政策科学のメソドロジー)

抄録

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework of standard procedures for a basic exploratory social network analysis. Social network researches have experienced a great change in 1998. Inspired by Watts and Strogatz, huge number of natural scientists started to pay attention to networks and have searched for common behaviors of and laws governing social, natural, informational and various kinds of networks. Both social network analysts with sociological or organizational backgrounds and natural or engineering scientists (e.g. physicists, mathematician, medical scientists, information scientists, AI researchers) who share their interest in network feel the need for mutual collaboration. The need is serious, yet there exist many obstacles for successful collaboration. Lack of attention to prior researches and differences in definition of concepts, in usage of parameters, in authorships are the examples. For successful interdisciplinary collaboration, I propose a framework of standard procedures for a basic exploratory social network analysis. My framework does not require any prior knowledge of programming nor super-high-power computing system. As I assume users of this framework to be beginners or middle-class network analysts, required are middle-class windows machine, UCINET, Pajek, EXCEL and common statistical package.