An investigation of fit measures for longitudinal network and attribute co-evolution models

Dohleman, Bethany S.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/18645 Copy

Description

Title

An investigation of fit measures for longitudinal network and attribute co-evolution models

Author(s)

Dohleman, Bethany S.

Issue Date

2011-01-21T22:52:59Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Anderson, Carolyn J.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Anderson, Carolyn J.

Committee Member(s)

• Green, Harold
• Han, Shin-Kap
• Hong, Sungjin
• Hubert, Lawrence J.

Department of Study

Psychology

Discipline

Psychology

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

co-evolution network models

Abstract

Modeling the processes underlying social network and attribute change allows researchers to better identify and understand dependencies present among actors — people, places, or things. The connections that exist among these actors change over time, depend on the presence or absence of other connections, and depend on the characteristics of the actors present. Advanced modeling techniques have been proposed that are designed to capture changes in structure and actor attributes. Fit measures have been developed for actor-based models of network structural evolution (Schweinberger, 2007; Snijders, 1996). Snijders et al. (2006) extended the actor-based structural evolution model to an actor-based co-evolutionary model that includes actor attributes. Despite recent methodological advances in the estimation of co-evolution models, measures have neither been developed nor evaluated to assess how the inclusion of actor attributes contributes to the model. Four measures are developed in this paper, including an extension of Snijders’ t-test to a Pseudo-Wald test statistic, an extension of Schweinberger’s score test for use in a co-evolution model, an entropy-based goodness-of-fit measure, and an R^2 goodness-of-fit measure for actor-based co-evolution models. Following the theoretical development of each measure, the behavior and performance of each are compared in a large simulation study. Results from this simulation show that each proposed measure displays expected behavior, especially as the number of actors increases, and shows promise for future use as fit measures in co-evolution models.

Graduation Semester

2010-12

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/18645

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2010 Bethany S. Dohleman

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