IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/somere/v19y1991i3p324-353.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Adding Social Structure to Diffusion Models

Author

Listed:
  • DAVID STRANG

    (University of Iowa)

Abstract

Most diffusion models make the implausible assumption that diffusion is unstructured by relationships within the population of interest. This article proposes methods for incorporating a priori notions about social structure into analysis. Diffusion is modeled within an event history framework where the individual's rate of adoption is a function of prior adoptions by related actors. Two diffusion models are suggested: an epidemic model where adoption rates vary with the number of prior adoptions, and a salience model where adoption rates vary with time since the last event. This approach is illustrated in an examination of the decolonization of British and French colonies. Diffusion is shown to occur within regions rather than within empires or the world system as a whole.

Suggested Citation

  • David Strang, 1991. "Adding Social Structure to Diffusion Models," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 19(3), pages 324-353, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:somere:v:19:y:1991:i:3:p:324-353
    DOI: 10.1177/0049124191019003003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0049124191019003003
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0049124191019003003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Verstraeten, Soraya P.A. & van Oers, Hans A.M. & Mackenbach, Johan P., 2016. "Decolonization and life expectancy in the Caribbean," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 87-96.
    2. Christoph Engel & Alon Klement & Karen Weinshall Margel, 2017. "Diffusion of Legal Innovations: The Case of Israeli Class Actions," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2017_11, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, revised Jan 2018.
    3. Thomas Ambrosio & Jakob Tolstrup, 2019. "How do we tell authoritarian diffusion from illusion? Exploring methodological issues of qualitative research on authoritarian diffusion," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 53(6), pages 2741-2763, November.
    4. Norman Braun & Henriette Engelhardt, 2002. "Diffusion processes and event history analysis," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2002-007, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    5. Mushkin, I. & Solomon, S., 2017. "The Inverse Contagion Problem (ICP) vs," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 484(C), pages 516-531.
    6. Maureen Boyce & Mark Byrne & Erin Dorpinghaus & D. S. Malik & John N. Mordeson, 2016. "Diffusion in Networks: The Strategic Spread of Islamism," New Mathematics and Natural Computation (NMNC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 12(02), pages 113-133, July.
    7. Torben Heinze, 2011. "Mechanism-Based Thinking on Policy Diffusion. A Review of Current Approaches in Political Science," KFG Working Papers p0034, Free University Berlin.
    8. Osei-Owusu, Alexander, 2015. "The Analysis of the Ghana Telecom Industry," 26th European Regional ITS Conference, Madrid 2015 127172, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    9. Philip Schleifer & Matteo Fiorini & Graeme Auld, 2017. "Transparency in Transnational Sustainability Governance: A Multivariate Analysis of Regulatory Standard-Setting Programs," RSCAS Working Papers 2017/16, European University Institute.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:somere:v:19:y:1991:i:3:p:324-353. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.