Recent Advancements, Developments and Applications of Personal Network Analysis

Abstract

We are pleased to introduce recent advancements in personal network analysis and applications in this special issue of the International Review of Social Research – IRSR. The idea of this special issue yielded in the summer of 2015, during the 8th edition of the Summer Course on personal networks given by the Universitat Autonoma deBarcelona(specifically, the egolab-GRAFO research team at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, UAB). That idea very soon turned into an invitation to international scholars to submit original papers focused on either a fully personal research design or on a design combining personal network analysis with other approaches (e.g. mixed research methods). In addition, we encouraged authors from all disciplines and fields to submit both theoretically and methodologically oriented papers, as long as they employ a personal network analysis approach. In the end, a bouquet of ten papers was kept for publication. Equally eclectic and complementary, these papers are related under the personal network analysis umbrella. In what follows, our foreword continues with two interrelated sections. First, we provide a glance on the field of personal network studies, which targets a wide general public less familiarized with structurally analytic approaches (for a detailed view on structural thinking underpinning social network analysis (SNA), see Borgatti et al. 2014; Wellman, 1988). And, second, we briefly introduce each of the ten papers comprising this special issue.