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Stochastic actor-oriented models as implemented in the R package RSiena help researchers study social network dynamics and the co-evolution of social networks and social actors' individual behavior. While originally developed for directed networks and discrete behavior, the model now accommodates a wide range of data types as dependent variables, including undirected networks, two-mode networks, multiplex networks, and continuous behavior.
Over the years, a large selection of effects has been implemented for stochastic actor-oriented models. Many of these were motivated by the diverse set of research questions network researchers have about social dynamics. Yet, you may still run into the problem of wanting to study a social mechanism for which the RSiena manual does not contain a matching effect. In this case, if you feel comfortable programming in R, you may want to implement an effect in RSiena yourself.
This workshop will discuss how to create an effect in RSiena. Since the back-end of the RSiena code was implemented in C++ for computational efficiency, creating RSiena effects involves coding in both R and C++. The workshop will give a brief introduction to C++, discussing just those parts you need to be able to create your effect. We will go through the several phases of developing an RSiena effect, going from social mechanism to effect definition to implementation and testing. We will also see how implementing effects can go wrong and discuss how you can debug your work. Finally, we will discuss how you can decide per effect, depending on your coding experience, whether to implement it yourself or to ask for help.
The target audience for this workshop consists of RSiena users who feel comfortable programming in R (e.g., writing a function, writing for-loops, etc). No prior experience in C++ is required. The workshop will not introduce the stochastic actor-oriented modeling framework but only focus on implementing effects. Please refer to the Sunbelt 2025 workshop list for introductory workshops on RSiena.
Length: 3 hours
Capacity: 30 people
Presentations
Creating New Effects in RSiena
Nynke Niezink
Stochastic actor-oriented models as implemented in the R package RSiena help researchers study social network dynamics and the co-evolution of social networks and social actors' individual behavior. While originally developed for directed networks and discrete behavior, the model now accommodates a wide range of data types as dependent variables, including undirected networks, two-mode networks, multiplex networks, and continuous behavior.
Over the years, a large selection of effects has been implemented for stochastic actor-oriented models. Many of these were motivated by the diverse set of research questions network researchers have about social dynamics. Yet, you may still run into the problem of wanting to study a social mechanism for which the RSiena manual does not contain a matching effect. In this case, if you feel comfortable programming in R, you may want to implement an effect in RSiena yourself.
This workshop will discuss how to create an effect in RSiena. Since the back-end of the RSiena code was implemented in C++ for computational efficiency, creating RSiena effects involves coding in both R and C++. The workshop will give a brief introduction to C++, discussing just those parts you need to be able to create your effect. We will go through the several phases of developing an RSiena effect, going from social mechanism to effect definition to implementation and testing. We will also see how implementing effects can go wrong and discuss how you can debug your work. Finally, we will discuss how you can decide per effect, depending on your coding experience, whether to implement it yourself or to ask for help.
The target audience for this workshop consists of RSiena users who feel comfortable programming in R (e.g., writing a function, writing for-loops, etc). No prior experience in C++ is required. The workshop will not introduce the stochastic actor-oriented modeling framework but only focus on implementing effects. Please refer to the Sunbelt 2025 workshop list for introductory workshops on RSiena.
