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The Preliminary Analysis of Emergent Social Structure in Groups

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

James H. Davis
James H. Davis*
Affiliation:
Miami University (Ohio)
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Abstract

The problem of detecting emergent social structure in small groups is examined in terms of establishing a baseline or expected structure. The standard proposed here is equalitarianism; that is to say, every member is equally likely to interact with every other member. Using information theory, a formal statement of the equalitarian argument is possible. In addition to detecting a deviation by a single group, the structural tendency of several groups assigned to some experimental condition is discussed. This technique is designed for the preliminary analysis of structure; it deals only with the general character of the total structure.

Type
Original Paper
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , June 1963 , pp. 189 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © 1963 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

*

The author is indebted to Frank Restle for valuable criticism and comment upon an earlier draft of this paper.

†

This baseline problem is similar to one encountered in studies of group problem solving. Faust [5], Davis [3], and Davis and Restle [4] have proposed the statistical pooling model of Lorge and Solomon [13] as a proper standard against which to compare the group's product in certain cases. (See Restle and Davis [22] for a more extensive theoretical discussion of individual and group problem solving.)

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