The aim of this project is to develop a model of the evolution of acquaintance networks to be compared with empirical network data while both, data collection and model, are adjusted to each other to test basic hypotheses of structure building processes at network evolutions.
Therefore, I developed a model to describe the network evolution in a first phase of network establishing via the concepts of homophily and preferential attachment and in a second phase of network restructuring via the concept of social balance. Furthermore, momentarily I'm running a survey at a boarding school near Dresden with 300 pupils over a time frame of one year.