Customer Reviews

Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am a research consultant specializing in SNA. This book is the best in the field, as a reference for those formally trained in the discipline or a self-instruction manual for those who really want to use SNA methodology. It's well written; but the mathematical and combinatric underpinnings of SNA won't make for light reading. This books stands out among others in that each subject area is thoroughly documented and cited for further reading and examples of application, and that the base algorithms are provided for most SNA techniques - useful if you want to learn how to "do" instead of just run a software package, or want to program your own. No SNA analyst should neglect this reference.

This book is unbelievably tedious and repetitious. There is very little actual content for the length of the book. It takes nearly 200 pages just to define some very basic terms from graph theory. This might have been fine if the space were taken up by some sort of meaningful discussion on the relevance of these graph theory concepts to sociological studies and theory. The book (possibly the field?) has the flavor of "here's a hammer, now what can we hit with it?".

Would have liked to see a format based on justification of the analytic techniques from sociological principles, or something much much more concise. Nothing much to see here, move on.

i purchased this book for my research purpose. after reading several chapters, i found this book is really helpful. you can consider it as a handbook for social network analysis, if you want to do some relevant research. you also could use it as an introductory reference, if you want to know something about social network analysis even you have not started such a kind of research yet. anyway, this book is not so expensive, while offering you enough knowledge in this area.

There is no good mechanism on Amazon to distinguish this unfortunate dichotomy: This excellent resource for those studying networks belongs on your bookshelf even if it can be pedantic.

The Kindle is excellent in many things. Handling books that rely heavily on indices is not one of them.

This book has a table of contents that is too high-level to be useful. However, even in the small print, the indices cover 42 kindle 'pages' on an ipad (kindle on ipad). This is a reference book. This is not start-at-the-beginning sort of book. There are therefore 42 maddening pages of items in the indices without any way (page or place) or referencing them. This is a fault of the Kindle, not the book. However, other books at least have page numbers so that you can approximate. This kindle edition has blank space.

I had to spend the $$ on the print version in addition. Don't waste your money too.

I agree with Steven Roberts -- this book is very repetitive. It is almost 800 pages long. It could have been cut to 400 pages with some editing to remove successive pairs of sentences that say almost exactly the same thing and to remove exasperatingly repetitive references to the literature.

The authors are very fond of "noting" things. I didn't count, but I'm sure that the formulation "We note that ..." must appear at least 1000 time in this book.

I think this is the most tedious book I have ever read. I did force myself to read every page. But in the end, my take is that it was much too great an investment in tools. All of the examples in the book are either hypothetical or toy-like. I can't see any reason why all of the (pseudo)mathematical superstructure was necessary.

This book is very comprehensive, but that's not always a good thing. I'd have an easier time looking up stuff if I had an electronic version. I tried selling this book back, and Amazon offered $8 which is a joke.. Get it at a library if you can find it.

This book provides detailed and authoritative information that is essential for those who want to employ SNA as a methodology.

This book is supported in graph theory, the authors make a comprehensively use of matrix technique and short formulas for explaining how social groups are associated.
The issue is that you, independently of the field in which develop your tasks, can apply network analysis for a better understanding of the environment and their entities.
Congratulations to the authors.
Sergio Quijada
Lieutenant Colonel
PhD Student.

I think, This book is the best written book I have ever read. I use it to teach my students how to write. My first language is spanish, but the book is so well written that is extremily easy to read and understand. And most important than this, it is an excelente and necessary book to introduce social network analisys to any new practitioner.

This volume offers a comprehensive introduction to the field of Social Network Analysis. It's bibliography is extraordinarily complete.