SNA Respository
Published:
Here is a collection of some useful websites I have come across as I learn to code!
Social Network Analysis Repository
Monk parakeets are highly social and form individualized relationships with members of their colony. This means that the presence, context, and strength of relationships vary between pairs, or dyads. I use social network analysis (SNA) to visually represent parakeets (via nodes) and their relationships (via edges that connect nodes) with others. SNA is a useful tool to analyze affiliative relationships, but I’ve quickly realized how overwhelming jumping to SNA can be!
Thankfully there are tons of resources available to anyone looking to learn SNA, but it’s difficult to sort through tons of tutorials, websites, and books designed for different audiences in mind. This can be espeically difficult to navigate if you’re new to coding! I won’t attempt to reinvent the wheel rather my goal is to compile helpful SNA resources that I have come across as I learn SNA as a novice coder. Hopefully, you will find this repository useful no matter what stage of coding you are at!
If you know of any helpful resources that I have missed, feel free to email me!
You can also find a table of my posts!
| Source | Tags | Coding experience | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dia Shizuka’s blog | blog, tutorials, example code, R, igraph | Beginner | Dr. Shizuka’s website is one of my favorites! I reference his blog all the time. He created his blog as a graduate student learning to code, so it covers all the basics. It has everything a beginner would need - easy-to-digest explanations, tutorials, and example code to work with. |
| Igraph R tutorial | R documentation, examples, manual, plotting tutorials | Beginner | igraph is a useful and very common R package for plotting networks! You can follow this link for details about igraph and its useful functions. |
| Pablo Barbera’s descriptive analysis | R documentation, examples, terms and definitions, plotting tutorials | Beginner | This is a very concise description of many common network summaries. It also includes example code. I highly recommend it if you want to know more about interpreting network summaries. |
| Katya Ognyanova’s website | R documentation, examples, terms and definitions, plotting tutorials | Beginner to advanced | Dr. Ognyanova’s blog is a MUST READ. I highly recommend checking out her website. It is incredibly thorough and easy to read. She provides downloadable data and code for several different programs with tutorials for various stages of coding experience. She also regularly updates her site. |
| Julian C. Evan’s Website | Igraph, examples, plotting aesthetics, R | Moderate | Dr. Evan’s igraph arrow size hack is useful if you want to customize the size of your edge arrows (igraph defaults to a standard arrow size which can look awkward with certain edge widths or node sizes). They have a few other network resources that you might find useful as well! |
| Liz Hobson’s Tutorial | Igraph, examples, plotting aesthetics, R | Moderate | Liz created a helpful tutorial for plotting an attribute-ordered network that highlights the rank order of individuals with the more complex interaction patterns. This is a good one to check out if you’re looking at dominance hierarchies! |
| Sankey plot | Example | Moderate | Sankey plots are essentially fancy networks that plot flow or order. I use Sankey plots to depict relationship progression. They are informative, beautiful, and interactive but the code can be tricky to refine. There are many helpful resources out there for constructing Sankey plots, and I have compiled my favorites below |
| Dr. Gerry Carter’s blog | Analyses | Moderate-advanced | Statistical tests for network analysis can be a little more involved compared to traditional statistical tools. Dr. Carter’s post is extremely helpful for summarizing the state of the field, and he provides several very useful research papers. 10/10 would recommend. |
| Post title | Tags | Coding experience | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 step framework | notes | Beginner | I present my 5-step framework for how I approach data analysis. I work through an example of how I would import, clean, wrangle, summarize, and plot data. |
| What I learned teaching R | notes | Beginner | I talk about what I learned about teaching coding in R as I learn how to code in R. I give some advice for anyone looking to start coding. |
| R packages and functions | notes | Beginner | I share my way of thinking about functions, packages, and writing code. This post isn’t necessarily a tutorial, rather a different perspective for anyone struggling to understand how R works. I hope this post will help you better understand the language. |
| Network aesthetics | notes | Moderate | I share some tips for creating a visually appealing network! I skip over the basics for plotting networks and focus on aesthetics, so make sure you’re familiar with wrangling network data and with igraph before getting started. |
| Custom layout | notes | Moderate | I show you how I made a custom layout! It’s clunky…but it works! |
