SAS with Social Networks Analysis

[NonSleeper]

I begin exploring the area of Social Networks Analysis and abundant programs are out there to do the job. I however don't want to spend time digging another software, but I seem not to find some claim whether SAS could also handle SNA.

Could you tell if we can use SAS for SNA? Is it necessary to purchase some specialized package to do so? Please also point me to some place where I can find extra information, materials, textbooks, etc.

Thanks

[Reeza]

Are you talking about getting data from FB or Twitter or about analytical methods surrounding social networks and the interconnectivity?

[NonSleeper]

Not really, though I've never looked at those data. I'm doing health-related research, which cover such stuffs as adolescent's heath, health behavior (smoking, alcohol use, drug abuse), diabetes, STDs, etc.

[FriedEgg]

SAS Social Network Analysis is part of the fraud detection suite of products, I beleive, and probably does not have the means to expand far beyond that intended capacity.  Reeza I beleive is thinking about a different product called SAS Social Media Analytics, which I also do not think meets your intended usage.  You should look at the clustering and nueral networking offered by SAS Enterprise Miner, or at JMP Clinical possibily but I have little knowledge of that product.

[art297]

I think what you are looking for is something that was dropped from the latest version of EM, although it did exist in the previous version, i.e., a link analysis node.

[NonSleeper]

I've never got access to any EM version. However, a professor writes a bunch of routines for SNA in SAS and disseminates them for free. Looks like a good start for me. Anyway, if you may be interested http://www.soc.duke.edu/~jmoody77/s884/syllabus_05.html

[FriedEgg]

These routines are developed using SAS/IML from the brief amount I reviewed, they do not actually use the SNA product developed by SAS.

[LainieH]

Hi there, here is a link to the information on http://www.sas.com/solutions/fraud/social-network/  that FriedEgg mentions. I work on the support site and with sasCommunity.org but will check to see if anyone internally has information about health-related research and network analysis.

[adm]

@LainieH, the above link to .../fraud/social-network/ does not work.

[sasdwe]

It isn't entirely clear if your use of the term "Social Network Analysis" is consistent with how SAS uses the term in the name of the SAS Social Network Analysis Server.  Depending on exactly what you are trying to do, it is quite likely that SAS has software that will enable you to perform the desired analysis.

The SAS Social Network Analysis server is a component of the SAS Fraud Framework.  It is not currently available outside of this solution.  Although it's name implies that it is somehow tasked with analyzing social network data such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., that is not what it does.  It would more accurately be described as a visual link analysis tool for examining the relationships between entities such as between patients, addresses, doctors, pharmacies, etc.  It is particularly adept at identifying the activities of organized fraud rings.

SAS also offers a Social Media analytics solution that is not limited to any particular social network site.  It offers many capabilities related to the analyis of web data.  For example, it examines the web for information related to a topic-such as a company, product, etc. and builds an analysis of the sentiment of comments posted about its target.  It then provides the ability to monitor the sentiment towards a particular topic on an ongoing basis.  More info can be found here: http://www.sas.com/software/customer-intelligence/social-media-analytics/&charset=utf-8&qt=social+me...

SAS has the ability to perform click-stream analysis of web log data.  More information can be found about this one the SAS website.

Lastly, the SAS Graph NV (Network Visualization) Workshop 9.3 is a GUI interface to node/link data that enables the user to interactively view linked data similarly to the SNA server, however it does not have the algorithms embeded that enable SNA to match scenarios to patterns.  It is a very robust visualization tool for network type data and can be used for viewing a wide array of linked data.  It comes with SAS Graph and is documented in the SAS Graph reference manual.

Good luck!