| Social network analysis measure | Definition | Meaning in practice | What it measures |
| In-degree centrality | Sum of an actor’s incoming ties† | Level of activity or popularity of a given actor as identified by others | Level of perceived influence and involvement in information exchange/collaboration |
| In-degree centralization | Degree of inequality or variance in a network as a percentage of that of a perfect star (completely centralized) network of the same size‡ | Extent to which nodes are connected to one central actor in a network via incoming ties | Concentration of power in information exchange/collaboration |
| Betweenness centrality | Number of times an actor connects pairs of other actors who otherwise could not reach one another† | Individual actor’s potential to control relations or flows of information and resources between other actors who it connects | Degree of “brokerage” in (control over) information exchange/collaboration |
| Betweenness centralization | Degree of inequality or concentration in the distribution of betweenness centralities among actors relative to that of a perfect star (completely centralized) network‡ | Average difference in centrality between the most central node and all others§ | Concentration of control of information exchange/collaboration |
| Core–periphery ratio | Number of actors found in the core (those with high density of mutual ties) vs. the periphery (those with low density of mutual ties)‡ | Proportion of those actors who interact most frequently with each other (core) to those who interact seldom with each other (periphery) | Proportion of actors strongly/weakly involved in information exchange/collaboration (core actors as a percentage of all actors) |
| (Group) Homophily | Extent to which two actors (or groups) who share some attribute form social ties with each other‡ | Degree of interaction among like actors (or groups) | Extent of information exchange/collaboration (i.e., deliberation) within and among actor groups |
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†Source: Hawe et al. (2004). ‡Source: Hanneman and Riddle (2005). §Source: White and Borgatti (1994). |
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