AN ALGORITHM FOR FINDING THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIAL-GROUPS

Unlike the most widely used methods of researching equivalent vertices in network analysis (structural or regular equivalences), the one whi ch we propose in.this paper is based upon a new definition of equivale nce meeting the following requirements: (1) analyzing the data from a double point of view: local and global; (2) conserving the specificity of discrete data. Applying our algorithm in the context of a sociabil ity survey allows us to pinpoint groups with sociological coherence. T he study shows that network differences correspond to socio-demographi c differences.