Search

Research on heterophily as a relational phenomenon is mostly limited to specific professional contexts which do not include knowledge about status or value heterophily as a possible group-generating principle. This article tries to close this gap by proposing and applying a new method of data analysis to investigate this possible role of heterophily. We apply social network analysis to personal network data. As a preliminary, we introduce a conceptual distinction between two types of heterophily, what we call intra-category heterophily and inter-category heterophily, and we validate the adjusted residuals of contingency tables to measure these two types of heterophily. Then, we reconstruct the relational space of these heterophilous relations among categories or attributes defined by socio-demographic and status characteristics. Finally, we group by faction algorithm the categories or attributes that maintain denser heterophilous relationships with each other than with the rest. The methodology proves to be valid and useful for achieving the desired analytical objective, revealing that status-heterophilous relationships can be considered as guiding principles, or mechanisms, for generating groups of social categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is on the role that the phone plays in a mixed-methods empirical research. In the current sociological literature, the phone is a methodological object associated with quantitative fieldwork, while little is said on the phone as a tool for qualitative research. We reflect here on a case study on the use of parental leaves by fathers in Spain, which included the phone as the only communication tool between researchers and subjects. We collect out own experience as interviewers in the qualitative phase of the research project, and interviewed surveyors working in the field. We analyze the discursive data following grounded theory principles and compare the use of both techniques in the data gathering process, including sampling and design. Thus, we consider interviewing and surveying as mediated communication situations. Our findings show that the value of the phone as a tool for research is a matter of adequacy to a given methodology, rather than an issue of validity, reliability, or credibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]