The next Sunbelt Social Networks Conference (XXXI) will take place in February 2011 in St Pete Beach, Florida, USA. The preliminary program is available here. There is still time to submit abstracts (deadline is on October 29, 2010).

At the conference I will be teaching the workshop “Introduction to Social Network Analysis with R”. It will take place on February 8 during morning and afternoon sessions. See below for a summary information.

I will be posting additional information soon. I will be tagging all the posts and announcements related to this workshop with the “sunbelt xxxi workshop” tag. Use the tag cloud on the right or this link directly.

Introduction to Social Network Analysis with R

The workshop is an introduction to network data and classical SNA methods using R. It is planned to be a good prerequisite for other R-related workshops: Carter Butts’ workshop on classical statistical SNA, ERGM workshop, RSiena workshop, tnet and perhaps others.

The first part of the workshop will introduce R itself. Participants will learn how to work with R interface, script files, data objects, and perform basic data manipulation, modeling and visualization tasks.

The second part will focus on working with network data using R packages: network, igraph, and intergraph as well as preparing network data for analysis with RSiena. The material will cover

1. Manipulating network objects.
2. Working with node and tie attributes.
3. Creating network visualizations.
4. Computing various classical SNA descriptives.

Target audience: The workshop is targeted especially towards people who have limited or no experience with R.

Requirements: One of the features of R is its reliance on script files and a lack of graphical user interface. For some users this may be intimidating. The main requirement of this workshop is being ready to follow a discussion which necessarily involves learning R syntax and completing all the tasks by writing R commands and not by point-and-clicking. From that perspective working with R resembles very much interacting with SPSS using syntax files or using Stata only through the command-line. Last but not least, some familiarity with basics of SNA is expected, including representations of social network data (approx. level of section 3 of Wasserman & Faust).

Other requirements: The workshop will include some R exercises to be performed by the participants. Although it would be possible to follow the workshop without your own computer, bringing own laptop is encouraged. Participants are expected to install R on their laptops prior the start of the workshop. Some short installation instructions will be posted on-line soon and publicized through SOCNET mailing list.