A Test of Significance for the Homophily Index

Signorile, Vito; O’Shea, Robert M.

doi:10.1086/223880

Cited by 9 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…Otherwise, the analysis of homophily might be biased through highly active users who communicated a lot. This problem is quite common in studies of sociometric choice (see Signorile and O'Shea 1965). Events nested in users were weighted by taking the inverse value of the total number of events per user; all weights therefore summed to one for a given user.…”

Section: Effects On Educational Homophilymentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Contacts Whom? Educational Homophily in Online Mate Selection

Škopek

Schulz

Blossfeld

2010

European Sociological Review

143

100

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Data from an online dating platform are used to study the importance of education for initiating and replying to online contacts. We analyse how these patterns are influenced by educational homophily and opportunity structures. Social exchange theory and mate search theory are used to explain online mate selection behaviour. Our results show that educational homophily is the dominant mechanism in online mate choice. Similarity in education significantly increases the rate of both sending and replying to initial contacts. After controlling for the opportunity structure on the platform, the preference for similar educated others is the most important factor, particularly among women. Our results also support the exchange theoretical idea that homophily increases with educational level. If dissimilarity contacting patterns are found, women are highly reluctant to contact partners with lower educational qualifications. Men, in contrast, do not have any problems to contact lower-qualified women. Studies of educational homogamy generally show that couples where women have a higher level of education are rare. Our study demonstrates that this is mainly the result of women's reluctance to contact lower qualified men.

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Section: Effects On Educational Homophilymentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Contacts Whom? Educational Homophily in Online Mate Selection

Škopek

Schulz

Blossfeld

2010

European Sociological Review

143

100

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“…However, this tool suffers from thorny methodological problems: gender/ethnic/age/trait compositions vary across sub-samples, subjects differ in the number of nominations they make, and the issue of sampling-without-replacement should not be ignored (though often is). Previous approaches to solving these methodological problems have generally taken one of two paths: proportional indices such as the Criswell index (Criswell, 1939(Criswell, , 1943 or differential indices, such as the homophily index (Signorile & O'Shea, 1965). Unfortunately, neither approach as presently employed is without difficulties.…”

Section: Approach To Sociometric Data Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Do anti-immigrant sentiments track into Danish classrooms? Ethnicity, ethnicity salience, and bias in children's peer preferences

Wagner

Camparo

Tsenkova

et al. 2008

International Journal of Educational Research

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“…This difficulty could be remedied with a differential index: Take the difference between a raw score value and that expected from chance and then normalize so that the index is bounded. This is essentially the logic behind the homophily index, I H (Laumann et al, 1994;Signorile & O'Shea, 1965), 1 which is expressed as…”

Section: The Homophily Indexmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, problems inherent in the Criswell index may be expected to manifest themselves to some degree in all proportional indices. With regard to differential indices, this article focuses on the homophily index (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994;Signorile & O'Shea, 1965). Again, this is not because the homophily index is especially problematic, but because it has recently received positive attention and use within the research community (Hamm et al, 2005;Joyner & Kao, 2000).…”

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confidence: 99%

In the Eye of the Beholder

Camparo

Wagner

2009

Applied Psychological Measurement

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Peer nominations are used widely in psychological and sociological research to examine intergroup dynamics, even though this assessment tool suffers from thorny methodological problems: Gender, ethnic, age, and trait compositions vary across subsamples, subjects differ in the number of nominations they make, and the issue of sampling without replacement is often ignored. To overcome these problems, the authors have developed a differential index for the peer nominations procedure, with the number of individuals chosen above or below chance as the unit of measure. The index is specifically designed for use with individuals (as opposed to subgroups like classrooms), so that group means, confidence intervals, and standard deviations are readily determined, opening the door to research designs that go beyond null hypothesis testing. Here, we introduce the index and illustrate its unique capabilities in a study examining preference and bias reciprocity among fourth-grade students.

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A Test of Significance for the Homophily Index

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Who Contacts Whom? Educational Homophily in Online Mate Selection

Who Contacts Whom? Educational Homophily in Online Mate Selection

Do anti-immigrant sentiments track into Danish classrooms? Ethnicity, ethnicity salience, and bias in children's peer preferences

In the Eye of the Beholder

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