Academic Networks
Wave III Education Data Users’ Guides

Extensive educational research has shown that the internal academic organization of schools shapes within-school academic and social processes and students' outcomes. The large within-school samples of Add Health allow for the construction of social network measures based on student course-taking patterns. AHAA adapted and developed two systematic approaches for measuring academic networks within high schools for two academic years, 1994-1995 and 1995-1996: (1) course-overlap indicators, akin to the friendship data in Add Health that captures dyadic ties between two individuals, were constructed, enabling analysts to examine the effects of the relationships that occur when students take similar courses, and (2) local positions were estimated using network methodology to produce non-overlapping course-taking clusters for all the original Add Health schools (Field, Frank, Schiller, Riegle-Crumb, and Muller 2006; Frank, Muller, Schiller, Riegle-Crumb, Mueller, Crosnoe, and Pearson 2008). Students are placed in one local position per academic year, based upon the students' transcript-recorded course-taking history. These local positions represent particularly salient, intermediate social contexts within the larger school environment. Through the use of hierarchical-linear modeling techniques, these local positions can be used to estimate the effects of the social milieus within schools on student academic, social, and health-related outcomes.

Users’ Guides and Associated Data Files

Academic Networks Codebook, 2007
educov94: This data file contains three measures (in addition to respondent AID and alter’s respondent AID) corresponding to the 1994-1995 academic year: an unweighted course-overlap indicator, a weighted course-overlap indicator, and an indicator conveying the school where coursework was taken.
educov95: This data file contains three measures (in addition to respondent AID and alter’s respondent AID) corresponding to the 1995-1996 academic year: an unweighted course-overlap indicator, a weighted course-overlap indicator, and an indicator conveying the school where coursework was taken.
edunet: This data file contains the local positions indicators for both 1994-1995 and 1995-1996 school years. It includes position assignments as well as the probabilities of those assignments.

References

Field, Samuel H., Kenneth A. Frank, Kathryn Schiller, Catherine Riegle-Crumb, and Chandra Muller. 2006. "Identifying Social Positions From Affiliation Networks: Preserving the Duality of People and Events." Social Networks 28 (2):97-186.

Kenneth A. Frank, Chandra Muller, Kathryn S. Schiller, Catherine Riegle-Crumb, Anna Strassmann Mueller, Robert Crosnoe, and Jennifer Pearson. 2008. “The Social Dynamics of Mathematics Coursetaking in High School.” American Journal of Sociology 113(6):1645–1696.