Social Network Experiments

What is the most effective way of determining causal processes involving social networks? Many, if not most, network researchers would argue that networks have a causal impact on individual and collective outcomes, but identifying causal relationships in networks is notoriously challenging. This chapter provides an overview of experimental designs and gives several examples of how experimental methods can be employed in social network research. Experiments provide unsurpassed certainty in causal identification by allowing the researcher to control all aspects of the process while in many cases substantially reducing data collection costs. Moreover, with the aid of computers, the internet, and a little creativity, it is often possible to collect highly reliable data from online samples with the aid of crowdsourcing services, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. With the aid of these tools, the opportunities have never been better for showing the causal relevance of network structures.