008-02 Social Networks and the Military Family Study: An Exploratory Analysis of Person-Role Two-Mode Networks

Social relations and networks have significant implications for the social and material support that individuals have access to. These resources are critical for military families, which are subjected to a unique set of pressures compared to their civilian counterparts. These include repeated stresses of cycles of relocation, separation, and reunion, and geographical isolation from extended-family support systems. We demonstrate that two-mode person-role network analysis is better suited to helping us understand the social support and other resources that are available to military personnel and their families contingent on the roles represented by their network members than tie enumeration methods.