Structural cohesion
Nowadays, Structural cohesion is a topic that has gained great relevance in today's society. For many years now, Structural cohesion has captured the attention of people of all ages and interests. Over time, Structural cohesion has become a recurring topic in daily conversations, as well as in the media and social networks. Whether due to its impact on people's lives, its historical relevance or its importance at a global level, Structural cohesion has managed to position itself as a topic of general interest. In this article, we will explore in depth the different edges and aspects related to Structural cohesion, with the aim of offering a broad and complete perspective on this topic that is so relevant today.
 | This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. (August 2016) |
In sociology, structural cohesion is the conception of a useful formal definition and measure of cohesion in social groups. It is defined as the minimal number of actors in a social network that need to be removed to disconnect the group. It is thus identical to the question of the node connectivity of a given graph in discrete mathematics. The vertex-cut version of Menger's theorem also proves that the disconnection number is equivalent to a maximally sized group with a network in which every pair of persons has at least this number of separate paths between them. It is also useful to know that k-cohesive graphs (or k-components) are always a subgraph of a k-core, although a k-core is not always k-cohesive. A k-core is simply a subgraph in which all nodes have at least k neighbors but it need not even be connected.
The boundaries of structural endogamy in a kinship group are a special case of structural cohesion.
Software
Cohesive.blocking is the R program for computing structural cohesion according to the Moody-White (2003) algorithm. This wiki site provides numerous examples and a tutorial for use with R.
Examples
Some illustrative examples are presented in the gallery below:
-
The 6-node ring in the graph has connectivity-2 or a level 2 of structural cohesion because the removal of two nodes is needed to disconnect it. -
The 6-node component (1-connected) has an embedded 2-component, nodes 1-5 -
A 6-node clique is a 5-component, structural cohesion 5
Perceived cohesion
Perceived Cohesion Scale (PCS) is a six item scale that is used to measure structural cohesion in groups. In 1990, Bollen and Hoyle used the PCS and applied it to a study of large groups which were used to assess the psychometric qualities of their scale.
See also
References
- ^ N, T; White, Douglas (2003). "Structural Cohesion and Embeddedness: A Hierarchical Concept of Social Groups" (PDF). American Sociological Review. 68 (1): 1–25. doi:10.2307/3088904. JSTOR 3088904. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-09-27. Retrieved 2006-08-19.
- ^ White, Douglas; Frank Harary (2001). "The Cohesiveness of Blocks in Social Networks: Node Connectivity and Conditional Density" (book). Sociological Methodology. 31 (1): 305–359. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.304.3296. doi:10.1111/0081-1750.00098. S2CID 15806800. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
- ^ Chin, Wynne W., et al. Perceived Cohesion: A Conceptual and Empirical Examination: Adapting and Testing the Perceived Cohesion Scale in a Small-Group Setting. 1999. Small Group Research 30(6):751-766.