Zachary Karate Club

Description

This network represents friendship between members of a university-based karate club. The club was observed for over a period of three year from 1970 to 1972. Two individual in the network are considered to be friends if the two individuals consistently were observed to interact outside the normal activities of the club (karate classes and club meetings). That is, an edge exists if the individuals could be said to be friends outside the club activities.

Attributes

This friendship networks consists of 34 individuals. Although club membership was near 60 at the time of observation, none of the 26 members not represented interacted with other club members outside the context of meetings and classes. These individuals belonged to neither faction, and did not participate in the politics of the club. Edges in this network represent friendship which is defined by consistent interaction outside the normal activities of the club (karate classes and club meetings).

Collection

The karate club was observed by W.W. Zachary for a period of three years, from 1970 to 1972. In addition to direct observation, the history of the club prior to the period of the study was reconstructed through informants and club records in the university archives. During the period of observation, the club maintained between 50 and 100 members, and its activities included social affairs (parties, dances, banquets, etc.) as well as regularly scheduled karate lessons. The political organization of the club was informal, and while there was a constitution and four officers, most decisions were made by concensus at club meetings. For its classes, the club employed a part-time karate instructor.

At the beginning of the study there was an incipient conflict between the club president and karate instructor over the price of karate lessons. As time passed, the entire club became divided over this issue. The factions were merely ideological groupings, however, and were never organiztionally crystallized. There was an overt sentiment in the club that there was no political division, and the factions were not named or even recognized to exist by club members. Rather, they were merely groups which emerged from the existing network of friendship among club members at times of political crisis because of ideological differences. There was no attempt by anyone to organize or direct political strategies of the groups, and, in general, there was no barrier to interaction between members of opposing factions.

Licenses and Citation

Zachary Katate Club (1977) http://www.networkdata.isc.uci.edu
If the source of the data set does not specified otherwise, this data set is protected by the Creative Commons License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/.

Source

The data source should be cited as:
Mark Newman, Network Data
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/netdata/.

References

W. W. Zachary, An information flow model for conflict and fission in small groups, Journal of Anthropological Research 33, 452-473 (1977).
When publishing results obtained using this data set the original authors should be cited. In addition this package should be cited as:
Christopher L. DuBois, Emma S. Spiro, Zack Almquist, Mark S. Handcock, David Hunter, Carter T. Butts, Steven M. Goodreau, and Martina Morris. 2003 netdata: A Collection of Network Data
http://www.csde.washington.edu/statnet