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A Bayesian Approach to Social Relations Modelling

Hartmann, Alex (2021) A Bayesian Approach to Social Relations Modelling.

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Abstract:In this paper, a Bayesian social relations model (BSRM) for the analysis of round robin data is presented and compared to the well-known social relations model (SRM) of Kenny and La Voie (1984). The BSRM and SRM are evaluated regarding their performance in recovering the true parameters in a simulation study. Special attention is given to identify inter-individual relationship effects, which represent interaction effects between actors and partners. Three different types of inter-individual effects are considered: (1) approximately no effects, (2) varying effects across partners, and (3) constant moderate effects. In the end, an empirical application to child bullying data is provided. While both models are precise in their point estimates, the SRM is much more accurate in this regard. The BSRM performs better with respect to the precision of the estimates. The BSRM comes with a powerful Bayes factor test for hypotheses about inter-individual relationship effects, which performs well. The power of the Bayes factor depends on the sample size, but relationship effects could be identified with small data sets with two outcome variables and 8-20 actors. It is also shown that the BSRM is more flexible than the SRM in modeling relationship effects.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:77 psychology
Programme:Psychology BSc (56604)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/86513
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