Dan Ao Department of Sociology The Chinese University of Hong Kong May 30 th, 2008

 Social capital is defined as resources embedded in one’s social network (Lin, 2001).  From the perspective of resource composition, two types of social capital can be identified: ◦ Homophilous (homophily) ◦ heterophilous (heterophily)  Lazarsfeld & Merton

 There is voluminous evidence in the literature that the principle of homophily exists in social networks (e.g., Fischer 1982; Homans 1950; Laumann 1966, 1973, 1976; Lazarsfeld & Merton 1954; Lin 1982; Marsden 1981, 1988, 1990; McPherson et al. 2001).  The extent of homophily varies for each respondent, which may be one of the sources that differentiations in a variety of outcomes come out. 3

 Less attention has been paid to the heterophily principle.  How are the ties with groups other than that to which a respondent belongs formed? ◦ Are the heterophilous ties formed randomly? ◦ Are the heterophilous ties formed with certain patterns?  Social distance (Bogardus (1933), Laumann (1966), or McFarland and Brown (1973)) 4

 Marsden (1988) examined the patterns of inbreeding and social distance on respondent-alter dyads discussing important matters using data collected with the name generator in the 1985 GSS.  The stratifying variables include: ◦ Age ◦ Education ◦ Race/ethnicity ◦ Religion ◦ Sex 5

 His main conclusions are: ◦ Discussion relations are most constrained by race/ethnicity, and least by sex and education; ◦ Inbreeding effects are present for all five stratifying variables, and account for virtually all structure in dyads classified by race/ethnicity and religion; and ◦ Appreciable social distance biases in the formation of these strong ties are found for age and education, but not for other stratifying variables. 6

 Smith-Lovin et al. (2007) replicated the name generator questions in the 2004 GSS.  1985  2004?  They found that: ◦ (1) racial homophily is still the most salient dimension among these five statuses and has remained relatively constant over the two decades; ◦ (2) the tendencies of homophily over other statuses increase, with the exception of sex. 7

 To date, no studies have directly examined the patterns of homophily and heterophily using position-generated network data.  Studying network data from the position generator can yield fruitful results.  The differences between the name-generator and the position generator. 8

 The name generator technique:  Stronger ties, stronger role relations, or geographically limited ties (Campbell & Lee 1991)  Consisting mostly of the homophilous ties (friends and relatives)  Core network  The position generator technique: ◦ A more diverse social ties in terms of tie strength, role relations, and number of ties ◦ Composed of both homophilous (friends and relatives) and heterophilous ties (friends of friends, acquaintances) ◦ Extended network 9

 This study tries to follow the methods used in Marsden (1988) to model the patterns of homophily and heterophily using the position- generated network data in SC-USA  Two types of special ties: ◦ (1) very close ties ◦ (2) non-kin ties 10

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 As Marsden (1988) mentioned in his study, respondent-alter pairs are cluster sampled within respondents, therefore, there may be a design effect due to the clustering.  It is important to examine the effect of survey design on the distribution of X 2 and propose simple adjustments of this statistic.  Holt et al. (1980) propose a one moment adjustment of the X 2 : a weighted sum of cell design effects. 15

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 The inbreeding bias exists in all of the three statuses, although the extent varies.  Compared with core discussion networks, the results show that in the extended networks, the degree of racial/ethnic homophily is still tremendously strong.  It helps explain why a certain racial/ethnic group (Latinos) is disadvantaged in the access to social capital and the eventual utility of social capital in status attainment. 26