ERIC Number: EJ1207949
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Apr
Pages: 31
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1076-9986
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Modeling Social Networks as Mediators: A Mixed Membership Stochastic Blockmodel for Mediation
Sweet, Tracy M.
Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, v44 n2 p210-240 Apr 2019
There are some educational interventions aimed at changing the ways in which individuals interact, and social networks are particularly useful for quantifying these changes. For many of these interventions, the ultimate goal is to change some outcome of interest such as teacher quality or student achievement, and social networks act as a natural mediator; the intervention changes the social networks of the teachers in schools, and teachers with certain types of social networks tend to use better teaching practices, for example. Due to lack of methodology, however, social networks have not been modeled as mediators. We present a new framework for modeling social networks as mediators in which a social network model is embedded into a mediation model and both models are estimated simultaneously. As a proof of concept, we introduce a new network model for mediation, applicable for interventions that affect subgroup structure. We provide a small simulation study to demonstrate the feasibility of this model and explore some potential operating characteristics. Finally, we apply our model to examine the effects of instructional coaches on teacher advice-seeking networks and subsequent changes in beliefs about mathematics.
Descriptors: Interaction, Intervention, Mediation Theory, Social Networks, Models, Coaching (Performance), Help Seeking, Teacher Competencies, Teacher Effectiveness, Simulation
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: http://sagepub.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Institute of Education Sciences (ED)
Authoring Institution: N/A
IES Funded: Yes
Grant or Contract Numbers: R305D150045
Author Affiliations: N/A