On the 9th of December Dr. Dean Eckles (MIT Sloan) is visiting!
We are looking forward to his talk entitled: “Estimating Effects in Social Networks with Peer Encouragement Designs”
Here is a brief summary of the talk:
“Interactions among humans enable the spread of information, preferences, behavior, and disease. Despite large-scale measurement of human behaviors, credible identification and estimation of peer influence effects remains difficult. After reviewing other methods for identifying peer effects, including high-dimensional adjustment of observational data and randomized experiments that modulate mechanisms of peer effects, we present research designs that enable point identification of peer effects for relevant populations. In these peer encouragement designs, vertices are randomly assigned to conditions that affect adoption of a target behavior; the experimenter then observes how individuals are affected by the assignment of their peers via their peers’ behaviors. We present an example of a large peer encouragement design that identifies the effects of receiving feedback from peers on Facebook. This experiment reveals “virtuous cycles” in engagement with communication technologies.”
Dean will speak on the 9th of December, at 12.45, in SP.a.007 (Spinoza Building, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, the Netherlands). Don’t miss it!