Determining the performance of soldiers depending on their position in some social networks

Abstract

A social network can be defined as a group of entities linked between each other by means of some relational tie. Several studies indicate the existence of an influence of social networks on job performance. This thesis is intended to assess such idea. More specifically, the objective is to examine the relationship between the position of the entities in a social network with their performances through time. To that purpose, an analysis with real data about a set of soldiers from an European country army is conducted by using the software R. Among others, it contains measures of the soldiers performance and the social networks that can be defined on them. In order to assess such influence, a multilevel model is considered as a proper tool to fit the data, which is characterized by its longitudinal and its hierarchical structure. Besides, the data is unbalanced. Thus, this study will cover the concept of social network and the theory around this matter, as well as the multilevel model theory and its estimation.