Applying SIENA: An illustrative analysis of the co-evolution of adolescents’ friendship networks, taste in music, and alcohol consumption

Abstract

We give a non-technical introduction into recently developed methods for analyzing the co-evolution of social networks and behavior(s) of the network actors. This co-evolution is crucial for a variety of research topics that currently receive a lot of attention, such as the role of peer groups in adolescent development. A family of dynamic actor-driven models for the co-evolution process is sketched, and it is shown how the SIENA software can be used for estimating these models. We illustrate the method by analyzing the co-evolution of friendship networks, taste in music, and alcohol consumption of teenagers.