The data were gathered at three times to capture changes in group sentiment over time. They were represent three time points in the period during which a new cohort entered the monastery near the end of the study but before the major conflict began.
Each member ranked only his top three choices on ``liking''. (Some subjects offered tied ranks for their top four choices). A tie from monk A to monk B exists if A nominated B as one of his three best friends at that that time point.
samplike is the time-aggregated network.
It is the cumulative tie for ``liking'' over the three
periods. For this, a tie from monk A to monk B exists if A
nominated B as one of his three best friends at any of the
three time points.
This data is standard in the social network analysis literature, having been modeled by Holland and Leinhardt (1981), Reitz (1982), Holland, Laskey and Leinhardt (1983), and Fienberg, Meyer, and Wasserman (1981), Hoff, Raftery, and Handcock (2002), etc. This is only a small piece of the data collected by Sampson.
For additional examples of networks see the netdata
package which is part of the statnet package.
data(sampson)plot.network, ergmm