arXiv subjects

Robert P. Dalka

Publications and source records attributed to Robert P. Dalka.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

Network analysis of graduate program support structures through experiences of various demographic groups

Physics graduate studies are substantial efforts on the part of individual students, departments, and institutions of higher education. Understanding the factors that lead to student success and attrition is crucial for improving these programs. One factor that has recently started to be investigated is the broadly defined students' experiences related to support structures. The Aspects of Student Experience Scale (ASES), a Likert-style survey, was developed by researchers to do just that. In this study, we leverage the network approach for Likert-style surveys (NALS) methodology to provide a unique interpretation of responses to the ASES instrument for well-defined demographic groups. We confirm the validity of our findings by studying the stability of the NALS themes and investigating how they are expressed within demographic-based networks. We find that for all four themes in the original ASES study, certain thematic trends capturing students' experiences vary across the demographic-based networks in meaningful ways. We also reveal that for some demographic groups, there is an interesting interplay between, and mixing of, the original themes. Finally, our study showcases how NALS can be applied to other Likert-style datasets.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

Network analysis approach to Likert-style surveys

Likert-style surveys are a widely used research instrument to assess respondents' preferences, beliefs, or experiences. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate how network analysis (NA) can be employed to model and evaluate the interconnectedness of items in Likert-style surveys. We explore the advantages of this approach by applying the methodology to the aspects of student experience scale datasets and compare the results to the principal component analysis. We successfully create a meaningful network based on survey item response similarity and use modular analysis of the network to identify larger themes built from the connections of particular aspects. The modular NA of the network of survey items identifies important themes that highlight differences in students' overall experiences. Our network analysis for Likert-style surveys methodology is widely applicable and provides a new way to investigate phenomena assessed by Likert-style surveys.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2022

Restoring the structure: A modular analysis of ego-driven organizational networks

Organizational network analysis (ONA) is a method for studying interactions within formal organizations. The utility of ONA has grown substantially over the years as means to analyze the relationships developed within and between teams, departments, and other organizational units. The mapping and quantifying of these relationships have been shown to provide insight into the exchange of information and resources, the building of social capital, and the spread of culture within and between organizations. However, the ethical concerns regarding personally identifiable information (PII) that exist for traditional social science research are made more pertinent in ONA, as the relational nature of the network may leave participants open to identification by organization management. To address this, we propose a method of generating a network of organizational groups (e.g. units, departments, teams) through the projection of ego-networks absent of PII. We validate this method through modular analysis of the resulting networks and compare the identified structure to a known structure of the organization. The methodology lays a foundation for performing ONA that needs only anonymous ego-centric data to identify large-scale aspects of organizational structures.

physics.soc-ph↗