Network autocorrelation: A simulation study of a foundational problem in regression and survey research

Social Networks North-Holland Publishing Company NETWORK AUTOCORRELATION: OF A FOUNDATIONAL PROBLEM SURVEY RESEARCH * Malcolm M. DOW Northwestern Unioersity A SIMULATION STUDY IN REGRESSION AND Michael L. BURTON and Douglas R. WHITE University of California, Irvine It is axiomatic to the social sciences, and an essential part of the network perspective, that human performances are intricately linked with their social and enviromental contexts. Researchers in each of the disciplines have rediscovered this in the past decade with respect to a whole host of specific problem areas, under such labels as “context effects”, “index utility”. and “systems analysis”. The earliest mention of the problem with respect to quantitative research occured, to our knowledge, in the debate between the nineteenth century cultural diffusionists and the evolutionists. The latter regarded individual socie- ties as independent instances of uniform causation, and hoped to learn about causation from correlational studies. The former regarded their observations as embedded in an interactive network of historical rela- tionships such as diffusion, migration, conquest, and competition, where the historical, evolutionary and ecological context of each society and the network of interconnectedness between societies plays a major role in multiple causation. In this view, events cannot be regarded as * This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation to Michael Burton and Douglas White. The two Principal Investigators made major and equal contributions to this paper. We are grateful to Linton Freeman, Patrick Doreian, and Karl Reitz for their critical comments on this paper. ** Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60201, U.S.A. *** University of California, Irvine, CA 92717, U.S.A. 0 1982 North-Holland