Homework Assignment
Ego-Network Inventory, Part 1

Description

As described in the Ego-Networks handout and the Social Support handout, an ego-network is the set of people that a given person (known as "ego") has ties with, plus the ties among those people. It looks like this:

Of course, a real ego network has a lot more people in it.

Your assignment is to write down your ego network. Here are the details:

1. Write down the full name of everyone you know. By "know", I mean people that you've spoken to, know their name, and they know you too. They should be people alive today. Don't write more than a 1000 names. It takes a long time to do this, but it is an eye-opener. If you don't know their first and last name, use a short identifier (e.g., Bob, the bouncer at Maryanne's).

2. Enter all the names and where you know the person from (city, or city/state if ambiguous) into an Excel spreadsheet as follows:

It is crucial that you (a) type it in Excel, and (b) use the format above. The data you provide will be analyzed by computer, so all the datafiles must be identical in form.

3. Email the file to me at borgatts@bc.edu as an attachment, or hand in a disk if you don't know to send attachments.

Please note that the names you mention will not necessarily be kept confidential. As part of the analysis, I will be looking at the intersections between people's ego networks, and will report some of those intersections to the class. So ... Monica, if you're in the class, you may want to refer to "Peter" in Washington DC, rather than "Bill"!