An Automated Methodology for Conducting a Social Network Study of a University Faculty

This technical report describes the data-collection and analysis methodology used in a social network study of computer science faculty recently conducted at a top U.S. university. The study involved the construction of a social metanetwork that combines multiple dimensions of the faculty’s knowledge, task, and collaborative networks. The process of collecting the source-data, then messaging the data for analysis was completely automated using custom computer software. This allowed for an entirely nonobtrusive data collection process and simplified and repeatable analytic tasks. In this report: we first introduce the metamatrix framework and discuss its utility as a tool for complex network-analysis; next, we describe the data collection methodology; then, we explain metamatrix construction process; and finally we present some closing remarks. This report does not discuss specific analysis or findings of the underlying research, which are regarded as being confidential