On the inadequacy of nominal assortativity for assessing homophily in networks.
dc.contributor.author | Karimi, F | |
dc.contributor.author | Oliveira, M | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2024-06-18T10:05:15Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2023-11-29 | |
dc.date.updated | 2024-06-17T11:04:34Z | |
dc.description.abstract | Nominal assortativity (or discrete assortativity) is widely used to characterize group mixing patterns and homophily in networks, enabling researchers to analyze how groups interact with one another. Here we demonstrate that the measure presents severe shortcomings when applied to networks with unequal group sizes and asymmetric mixing. We characterize these shortcomings analytically and use synthetic and empirical networks to show that nominal assortativity fails to account for group imbalance and asymmetric group interactions, thereby producing an inaccurate characterization of mixing patterns. We propose the adjusted nominal assortativity and show that this adjustment recovers the expected assortativity in networks with various level of mixing. Furthermore, we propose an analytical method to assess asymmetric mixing by estimating the tendency of inter- and intra-group connectivities. Finally, we discuss how this approach enables uncovering hidden mixing patterns in real-world networks. | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | European Union Horizon Europe | en_GB |
dc.format.extent | 21053- | |
dc.format.medium | Electronic | |
dc.identifier.citation | Vol. 13, No. 1, article 21053 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.doi | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-48113-5 | |
dc.identifier.grantnumber | 101070285 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/136311 | |
dc.identifier | ORCID: 0000-0003-3407-5361 (Oliveira, Marcos) | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | Springer Nature | en_GB |
dc.relation.url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38030623 | en_GB |
dc.relation.url | https://github.com/macoj/assortativity | en_GB |
dc.rights | © The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. | en_GB |
dc.title | On the inadequacy of nominal assortativity for assessing homophily in networks. | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.date.available | 2024-06-18T10:05:15Z | |
exeter.article-number | 21053 | |
exeter.place-of-publication | England | |
dc.description | This is the final version. Available from Nature Research via the DOI in this record. | en_GB |
dc.description | Data availability: The sources of all empirical data used in our analyses are described in Supplementary Note 6. | en_GB |
dc.description | Code availability: All relevant code used in this study will be available at https://github.com/macoj/assortativity. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.eissn | 2045-2322 | |
dc.identifier.journal | Scientific Reports | en_GB |
dc.relation.ispartof | Sci Rep, 13(1) | |
dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | en_GB |
dcterms.dateAccepted | 2023-11-22 | |
dc.rights.license | CC BY | |
rioxxterms.version | VoR | en_GB |
rioxxterms.licenseref.startdate | 2023-11-29 | |
rioxxterms.type | Journal Article/Review | en_GB |
refterms.dateFCD | 2024-06-18T10:01:22Z | |
refterms.versionFCD | VoR | |
refterms.dateFOA | 2024-06-18T10:05:25Z | |
refterms.panel | B | en_GB |
refterms.dateFirstOnline | 2023-11-29 |
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