Classifying Social Roles by Network Structures

Network Analysis is employed as methodological approach to classify social roles. With this aim, we measure sociometric status by the direct observation of pre-school children behaviours. The data have been collected by a longitudinal observational study. We follow the children in seven waves for two months. In this study, we measure relational skills of subjects applying three procedures. Namely, the regular equivalence is used to detect similar positions within the network, the lambda sets to observe the ability to be intermediary and the cliques to assess the propensity to belong to a group. Concerning each analytic dimension, the results show an increase of relational competence and an association with ego-network measures.