Advertising and promotion · Large-scale randomized in-vivo social-network experiment with peer-effect estimation.
Identifying Influential and Susceptible Members of Social Networks
Sinan Aral, Dylan Walker (2012). Identifying Influential and Susceptible Members of Social Networks. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1215842
Plain-English take
Influence and susceptibility varied systematically by age, gender, and marital status; network position and individual traits jointly predicted product adoption contagion.
How much weight to give this
4/5 Field evidence with bounded scope
The 1–5 evidence-check score is a practical reading aid, not a formal peer review or a probability that a conclusion is true. It combines design strength (2 points), sample reporting (1), comparison/control clarity (1), and how much of the paper could be checked (1). Access affects how confidently this directory can assess a study, not the study's underlying quality. Blinding is reported separately because it is not relevant to every design.
Large-scale randomized in-vivo social-network experiment with peer-effect estimation.
Approximately 12 million Facebook users and adoption of a commercial Facebook application.
Comparison details need confirmation in the full paper.
Only the publisher page was checked; full-text methods are not established.
Double-blind? Blinding was not established from the publisher page; this is not evidence that blinding was or was not used.
Research question
What the authors investigated
Identifying Influential and Susceptible Members of Social Networks?
Design
Large-scale randomized in-vivo social-network experiment with peer-effect estimation.
Sample and setting
Approximately 12 million Facebook users and adoption of a commercial Facebook application.
Reported result
What the study found
Influence and susceptibility varied systematically by age, gender, and marital status; network position and individual traits jointly predicted product adoption contagion.
This is a paraphrase of the source. Check the original paper for definitions, estimates, statistical uncertainty and analysis details.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
The application, platform, and period are specific; peer effects may differ for other products, platforms, and social-network behaviors. The accessible publisher page was used for this listing; correction history was not independently checked.
Possible founder application
Use as a bounded example of identifying influential and susceptible members of social networks; compare its context and design with your own market before applying its result.
Evidence access
Publisher article page; full-text availability varies and was not established in this review.
The directly fetched Science DOI page states that the study used large-scale in-vivo randomized experimentation with a representative sample of 12 million Facebook users. Publisher page was directly retrieved; detailed full-text methods were not independently verified.
If only an abstract or metadata was available, the profile is limited to claims supported there. A paper's paywall does not change its evidentiary status, but it limits what we can substantiate from accessible text.