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***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.sfu.ca/~insna/ ***** Hi- I am relatively new to social network analysis, so I apologize if these questions are rather basic. I'm working with an adjacency matrix that is both polytomous (a 0 to 3 scale) and asymmetrical. I would like to make the matrix symmetrical and dichotomous (using the transformations in UCINET). Are there any guidelines for the proper way to apply these tranformations? For example, it seems intuitively that, in symmetrizing, taking the average of two relations would retain more variance than taking the minimum or maximum of a relationship. Is the average therefore preferable in symmetrizing, or are there other factors to consider in the method chosen? Also, in dichotomizing the data, is there a standard method for determining the cutoff used? The scale used in our measures have a point that, conceptually, makes sense to draw the cutoff, but I'm not sure if there's a quantitative method of finding a cutoff that's preferable. I'm working with several different but related networks, and I would like to keep the cutoff the same in all of them. Finally, in both symmetrizing and dichotomizing, which should be applied first? Any thoughts, opinions, or references would be appreciated. Thanks very much, Allan Clifton _____________________________________________________________________ SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social network researchers (http://www.sfu.ca/~insna/). To unsubscribe, send an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message.