Imputation of missing links and attributes in longitudinal social surveys

摘要

Social network surveys, in which people are asked to identify their friends, are important tools for social scientists for studying social settings and phenomena such as villages, urban settings, street gangs, and crime. Such surveys are often conducted in waves over time, in which case a set of surveys is referred to as a longitudinal social survey of the target population. A significant portion of social network surveys has some part of the input data missing, and reaching the subjects who are not responsive to the surveys can be prohibitively expensive and difficult. Therefore, "imputation," that is, filling in missing data in longitudinal social surveys, has been a key focus of recent research.