Publications

2012
Social Trends in American Life: Findings from the General Social Survey since 1972
2011
Survey Methods for Network Data
Marsden, Peter V. 2011. “Survey Methods for Network Data.” The Sage Handbook of social Network Analysis, edited by John Scott and Peter J Carrington, 370-388. London: Sage Publications.
2010
Handbook of Survey Research. Second Edition
Marsden, Peter V, and James D Wright. 2010. Handbook of Survey Research. Second Edition. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. Emerald Publishing
2008
O'Malley, James A, and Peter V Marsden. 2008. “The Analysis of Social Networks.” Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology 8 (4): 222-269. Abstract

Many questions about the social organization of medicine and health services involve interdependencies among social actors that may be depicted by networks of relationships. Social network studies have been pursued for some time in social science disciplines, where numerous descriptive methods for analyzing them have been proposed. More recently, interest in the analysis of social network data has grown among statisticians, who have developed more elaborate models and methods for fitting them to network data. This article reviews fundamentals of, and recent innovations in, social network analysis using a physician influence network as an example. After introducing forms of network data, basic network statistics, and common descriptive measures, it describes two distinct types of statistical models for network data: individual-outcome models in which networks enter the construction of explanatory variables, and relational models in which the network itself is a multivariate dependent variable. Complexities in estimating both types of models arise due to the complex correlation structures among outcome measures.

2007
Keating, Nancy L, John Z Ayanian, Paul D Cleary, and Peter V Marsden. 2007. “Factors Affecting Influential Discussions Among Physicians: A Social Network Analysis of a Primary Care Practice.” Journal of General Internal Medicine 22 (6): 794-798. Abstract

BACKGROUND: Physicians often rely on colleagues for new information and advice about the care of their patients.

OBJECTIVE: Evaluate the network of influential discussions among primary care physicians in a hospital-based academic practice.

DESIGN: Survey of physicians about influential discussions with their colleagues regarding women's health issues. We used social network analysis to describe the network of discussions and examined factors predictive of a physician's location in the network.

SUBJECTS: All 38 primary care physicians in a hospital-based academic practice.

MEASUREMENTS: Location of physician within the influential discussion network and relationship with other physicians in the network.

RESULTS: Of 33 responding physicians (response rate = 87%), the 5 reporting expertise in women's health were more likely than others to be cited as sources of influential information (odds ratio [OR] 6.81, 95% Bayesian confidence interval [CI] 2.25-23.81). Physicians caring for more women were also more often cited (OR 1.03, 95% CI 1.01-1.05 for a 1 percentage-point increase in the proportion of women patients). Influential discussions were more frequent among physicians practicing in the same clinic within the practice than among those in different clinics (OR 5.03, 95% CI 3.10-8.33) and with physicians having more weekly clinical sessions (OR 1.33, 95% CI 1.15 to 1.54 for each additional session).

CONCLUSIONS: In the primary care practice studied, physicians obtained information from colleagues with greater expertise and experience as well as colleagues who were accessible based on location and schedule. It may be possible to organize practices to promote more rapid dissemination of high-quality evidence-based medicine.

2006
Marsden, Peter V. 2006. “Review essay on Generalized Blockmodeling.” Social Networks 28 (3): 275-282.
Network Methods in Social Epidemiology
Marsden, Peter V. 2006. “Network Methods in Social Epidemiology.” Methods in Social Epidemiology, edited by Michael J Oakes and Jay S Kaufman, 267-286. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Marsden, Peter V, Bruce E Landon, Ira B Wilson, Keith McInnes, Lisa R Hirschhorn, Lin Ding, and Paul D Cleary. 2006. “The Reliability of Survey Assessments of Characteristics of Medical Clinics.” 41, 265-283. Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To assess the reliability of survey measures of organizational characteristics based on reports of single and multiple informants.

DATA SOURCE: Survey of 330 informants in 91 medical clinics providing care to HIV-infected persons under Title III of the Ryan White CARE Act.

STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey.

DATA COLLECTION METHODS: Surveys of clinicians and medical directors measured the implementation of quality improvement initiatives, priorities assigned to aspects of HIV care, barriers to providing high-quality HIV care, and quality improvement activities. Reliability of measures was assessed using generalizability coefficients. Components of variance and clinician-director differences were estimated using hierarchical regression models with survey items and informants nested within organizations.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: There is substantial item- and informant-related variability in clinic assessments that results in modest or low clinic-level reliability for many measures. Directors occasionally gave more optimistic assessments of clinics than did clinicians.

CONCLUSIONS: For most measures studied, obtaining adequate reliability requires multiple informants. Using multiple-item scales or multiple informants can improve the psychometric performance of measures of organizational characteristics. Studies of such characteristics should report the organizational level reliability of the measures used.

Kalleberg, Arne L, Peter V Marsden, Jeremy Reynolds, and David Knoke. 2006. “Beyond Profit: Sectoral Differences in High Performance Work Practices.” Work and Occupations 33 (3): 271-302. Abstract

Drawing on a recent survey of establishments in the United States, the authors examine how nonprofit, public, and for-profit establishments vary in the use of high-performance work organization (HPWO) practices that offer opportunities for participation in decision making (via self-directed teams and offline committees), enhance the capacity for participation (via multiskilling practices such as job rotation), and provide incentives for participation (via compensation practices). Nonprofit and public organizations are less likely to use performance incentives (gain sharing and bonuses) and some multiskilling practices than are for-profit organizations but more likely to use both self-directed work teams and offline committees. Sectoral differences in the prevalence of incentive compensation and self-directed teams persist after correlates of sector that predict HPWO prevalence—including establishment size, industry, computational requirements, and unionization—are controlled.

2005
Marsden, Peter V. 2005. “The Sociology of James S. Coleman.” Annual Review of Sociology 31: 1-24. Abstract

This chapter surveys the career and scholarship of James S. Coleman. It tracks scholarly usage of his work, with attention to references after 1995 and the subject areas in which its use is concentrated. At base a scholar of problems in social organization, Coleman made influential contributions that range across the sociology of education, policy research, mathematical sociology, network/structural analysis, and sociological theory. Works from several phases of Coleman's career are cited widely by scholars in sociology, education, economics, business/management, and other social science fields; during the past decade his conceptual work on social capital has been most influential. Coleman's widely debated Foundations of Social Theory is receiving increasing attention and has helped to establish a stable if limited niche for rational choice analysis within sociology.

Recent Developments in Network Measurement
Marsden, Peter V. 2005. “Recent Developments in Network Measurement.” Models and Methods in Social Network Analysis, edited by Peter J Carrington, John Scott, and Stanley Wasserman, 8-30. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kalleberg, Arne L, and Peter V Marsden. 2005. “Externalizing Organizational Activities: Where and How U.S. Establishments Use Employment Intermediaries.” Socio-Economic Review 3 (3): 389-416. Abstract

Organizations are increasingly externalizing work activities, but vary as to where and how they do so. Using a US employer survey, we examine within- and between-organization differences in the use of employment intermediaries such as temporary help agencies and contract companies, in whether external workers from these intermediaries supplement on-payroll employees or exclusively perform activities, and in the exercise of supervisory control over external workers. Organizations use workers from employment intermediaries more often in work activities separable from the core workflow. External workers tend to supplement regular workers engaged in more central activities and exclusively perform more peripheral ones; employers are more apt to supervise external workers for more central activities. Small, private sector employers are more likely to use employment intermediaries. When large organizations do use external workers, they tend to use them in a supplementary rather than exclusive way, and to exercise supervisory control over them.

2004
Landon, Bruce E, Ira B Wilson, Keith McInnes, Mary Beth Landrum, Lisa Hirschhorn, Peter V Marsden, David Gustafson, and Paul D Cleary. 2004. “Effects of a Quality Improvement Collaborative on the Outcome of Care of Patients with HIV Infection: The EQHIV Study.” Annals of Internal Medicine 140 (11): 887-896. Abstract

BACKGROUND: Multi-institution collaborative quality improvement programs are a well-established and broadly applicable quality improvement strategy, but there is little systematic assessment their effectiveness.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effectiveness of a quality improvement collaborative in improving the quality of care for HIV-infected patients.

DESIGN: Controlled pre- and post intervention study.

SETTING: Clinics receiving funding from the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act.

PARTICIPANTS: 44 intervention clinics and 25 control clinics matched by location (urban or rural), region, size, and clinic type.

MEASUREMENTS: Changes in quality-of-care measures abstracted from medical records of pre- and post intervention samples of patients at each study clinic. Measures examined included use and effectiveness of antiretroviral therapy, screening and prophylaxis, and access to care.

INTERVENTION: A multi-institutional quality improvement collaborative (the "Breakthrough Series").

RESULTS: 9986 patients were studied. Clinical and sociodemographic characteristics of the intervention and control patients were similar (P > 0.05). Differences in changes in the quality of care were not statistically significant. The proportion of patients with a suppressed viral load increased by 11 percentage points (from 40.1% to 51.1%) in the intervention group compared with 5.3 percentage points (from 43.6% to 48.8%) in the control group, but this difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.18). In addition, rates of appropriate screening tests and prophylaxis did not differ between intervention and control sites.

LIMITATIONS: It was not possible to perform a pure randomized trial of the intervention or to assess other measures of quality, such as adherence and satisfaction.

CONCLUSIONS: This prospective, matched study of almost 10 000 patients found that a quality improvement collaborative did not significantly affect the quality of care. Additional research is needed to improve methods of teaching and implementing quality improvement programs to achieve better results.

Network Analysis
Marsden, Peter V. 2004. “Network Analysis.” Encyclopedia of Social Measurement, edited by Kimberly Kempf-Leonard, 819-825. San Diego: Academic Press.
2003
Kalleberg, Arne L, Jeremy Reynolds, and Peter V Marsden. 2003. “Externalizing Employment: Flexible Staffing Arrangements in U.S. Organizations.” Social Science Research 32 (4): 525-552. Abstract

Flexible staffing arrangements (such as temporary, contract, and part-time work) enable organizations to externalize administrative control or limit the duration of employment. We examine the prevalence and correlates of such arrangements using a recent large, representative survey of US establishments. We first develop a typology of flexible staffing arrangements and discuss reasons why organizations may adopt them. We then present measures of these flexible staffing arrangements and describe their distribution among US establishments. Finally, we examine hypotheses about the types of employers that are more or less likely to use the various types of flexible staffing arrangements, finding support for both cost-reduction and resource dependence perspectives. The use of flexible arrangements is more common in large establishments, in seasonal industries, and in establishments with highly female workforces.

Marsden, Peter V. 2003. “Interviewer Effects in Measuring Network Size Using a Single Name Generator.” Social Net 25 (1): 1-16. Abstract

Name generators used to measure egocentric networks are complex survey questions that make substantial demands on respondents and interviewers alike. They are therefore vulnerable to interviewer effects, which arise when interviewers administer questions differently in ways that affect responses-in this case, the number of names elicited. Van Tilburg [Sociol. Methods Res. 26 (1998) 300] found significant interviewer effects on network size in a study of elderly Dutch respondents; that study included an instrument with seven name generators, the complexity of which may have accentuated interviewer effects. This article examines a simpler single-generator elicitation instrument administered in the 1998 General Social Survey (GSS). Interviewer effects on network size as measured by this instrument are smaller than those found by Van Tilburg, but only modestly so. Variations in the network size of respondents within interviewer caseloads (estimated using a single-item “global” measure of network size and an independent sample of respondents) reduce but do not explain interviewer effects on the name generator measure. Interviewer differences remain significant after further controls for between-interviewer differences in the sociodemographic composition of respondent pools. Further insight into the sources of interviewer effects may be obtained via monitoring respondent–interviewer interactions for differences in how name generators are administered.

2002
Marsden, Peter V. 2002. “Egocentric and Sociocentric Measures of Network Centrality.” Social Networks 24 (4): 407-422. Abstract

Egocentric centrality measures (for data on a node’s first-order zone) parallel to Freeman’s [Social Networks 1 (1979) 215] centrality measures for complete (sociocentric) network data are considered. Degree-based centrality is in principle identical for egocentric and sociocentric network data. A closeness measure is uninformative for egocentric data, since all geodesic distances from ego to other nodes in the first-order zone are 1 by definition. The extent to which egocentric and sociocentric versions of Freeman’s betweenness centrality measure correspond is explored empirically. Across seventeen diverse networks, that correspondence is found to be relatively close—though variations in egocentric network composition do lead to some notable differences in egocentric and sociocentric betweennness. The findings suggest that research design has a relatively modest impact on assessing the relative betweenness of nodes, and that a betweenness measure based on egocentric network data could be a reliable substitute for Freeman’s betweenness measure when it is not practical to collect complete network data. However, differences in the research methods used in sociocentric and egocentric studies could lead to additional differences in the respective betweenness centrality measures.

2001
Social Networks, Job Changes, and Recruitment.
Gorman, Elizabeth H, and Peter V Marsden. 2001. “Social Networks, Job Changes, and Recruitment.” Sourcebook on Labor Markets: Evolving Structures and Processes, edited by Ivar Berg and Arne L Kalleberg, 467-502. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Abstract

This chapter reviews scholarship on how the matching of people to jobs is influenced by networks of interpersonal ties. By all accounts, that role is substantial on both the individual’s side and the employer’s side of the labor market. The mediation of job change and recruitment/selection processes by networks illustrates the embeddedness of labor market processes in ongoing structures of social relations (Granovetter 1985) with special clarity.