Social Networks
The University of Florida is a hub for research and service projects in the field of network analysis, and the BEBR Social Networks program is an integral part of this community. The program brings together an interdisciplinary group of students, faculty, and staff who are interested in social network theories and methods. BEBR’s Social Networks Program offers personal and professional network analysis and visualization, as well as recommendations for network interventions. This program is important for academic research as collaboration often occurs in teams and networks of researchers, and studying these networks helps monitor and drive research productivity at universities.
In 2012, BEBR and the UF Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) started a project aimed at mapping, visualizing, analyzing, and shaping collaboration networks at UF. Since then, BEBR has collaborated with various entities at UF, including the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, the UF-FAMU-USC CaRE² Health Equity Center Program, and the Biodiversity Institute, among others. BEBR’s collaborations with these entities have resulted in several published articles and presentations at international conferences. The importance of BEBR’s Social Networks Program cannot be overstated, as it serves as a vital resource for network analysis and intervention studies at the University of Florida.
BEBR’s Social Networks program has completed several notable projects in recent years, including for the National Institutes of Health Cancer Institute and the National Science Foundation which are both included in the table of projects listed below.
| FUNDER | PROJECT TITLE |
|---|---|
| National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute | Effect of Helpers Program On-line Training on Smoking Relapse and Social Networks |
| National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute | The Influence of Social Network Size, Composition and Function of Psychological Outcomes of Pediatric Cancer Caregiving |
| National Science Foundation | Extreme Weather Events and Individual differences in Threat Perception and Behavior |
| National Science Foundation | FW-HTF-RM: Collaborative Research: Future of Construction Work at the Human-Technology Frontier |
| National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism | Digital Motivational Behavioral Economic Intervention to Reduce Risky Drinking Among Community Dwelling Emerging Adults |
| National Science Foundation | Collaborative Research: RIPS Type 2: Vulnerability Assessment and Resilient Design of Interdependent Infrastructures |
| National Institute of Health (National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences) | Clinical & Translational Science Institute / Network Science Program |
BEBR’s Social Networks Program
offers personal and professional network analysis and visualization, as well as recommendations for network interventions.
Collaborations
- Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere
- CTSI
- UF-FAMU-USC CaRE² Health Equity Center Program
- Biodiversity Institute
- University of Kentucky Center for Clinical and Translational Science
- University of Miami Clinical and Translational Science Institute
- Florida State University College of Medicine
Team
- Christopher McCarty
- Raffaele Vacca
- Mark Girson
- Ruijie Mao
- Till Krenz
- Tom Smith
- Jared Adams
Reports and Studies
Networks of collaboration and research interests at the Center for Humanites and the Public Sphere at the University of Florida
As part of a research project at the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, data on the research interests, collboration and topics of classes taught by......
Using network science to identify and bridge scientific communities at a research university
Members of the Network Science Program at BEBR gave a presentation at the Translational Science 2018 conference on their data analysis and intrvention strategies. The program aims to expand......
The Structure, Evolution and Interaction of Multiplex Networks of Scientific Collaboration at a Research University
The aim if this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the structural evolution of scientific collaboration networks. A large body of literature has focused on the......
Creative Solutions to Elusive Data: Web-Scraping Online Police Reports to Map Cooffending Networks in US Cities
One truth new researchers quickly discover is that data collection is costly. In the social sciences, researchers expend copious amounts of time and grant money observing people, interviewing ......
A social network analysis of scientific collaborations at the University of Florida
Social Network Analysis (SNA) is a methodology and a theoretical perspective that studies patterns of relations among actors. When applied to the network of scientific collaborations at a......
Designing a network intervention on the UF scientific network
Social Network Analysis is not just about describing and explaining networks, it is also about using networks for specific interventions with specific goals. Network interventions have traditionally been......
Collaboration metrics from the UF network data, and their evolution
We used publicly available data on UF publications and grants to extract networks of collaborations among UF researchers in 2008-2012. This allowed us to define network metrics on ......