Workshop Overview

Schedule

About

This 3-hour workshop is separated into three parts, with plenty of Q&A and breaks structured throughout.

We will begin with an introduction to exponential random graph models. Here, we will talk about the modeling of relational outcomes, the concept of interdependence between units of observation, and how to properly capture all these things in a statistical model using what we call “local network configurations”.

The second part of the workshop is an R tutorial. During this tutorial, we will work through the practicalities of building and fitting ERGMs. We’ll run all the code on the screen, but you are encouraged to follow along on your own computers. This tutorial will take us from our initial research question to something close to what you might include in a manuscript.

In the final portion of the workshop, we will return to a conceptual discussion that will give you a sense of what ERGMs can do beyond what we demonstrate in this workshop. Since this is an introductory workshop, we’ve worked mainly with simple networks. In this final section, we will talk about the logic of specifying different contexts and adding constraints to the relational system. This takes us to the realm of temporal networks, bipartite networks, and multilayer networks.

Logistics

The workshop will be run over Zoom using a meeting format. We have several built-in Q&A periods but questions outside of those times are of course encouraged.

Depending on the number of participants, it might be difficult for the instructor and teaching assistant to see raised hands, but questions typed into the Zoom chat is always an option. The teaching assistant will aggregate all questions for the instructor to see.