This paper investigates the nature of institutional ties between a group of English schools, including a large proportion of private schools that might be thought of as contributing to the 'old boy network'. The analysis is based on a network of bilaterally-determined school rugby union fixtures. The primary importance of geographical proximity in the determination of these fixtures supplies a spatial 'ground truth' against which the performance of models is assessed. A Bayesian fitting of the latent position cluster model is found to provide the best fit of the models examined. This is used to demonstrate a variety of methods that together provide a consistent and nuanced interpretation of the factors influencing community and edge formation in the network. The influence of homophily in fees and the proportion of boarders is identified as notable, with evidence that this is driven by a community of schools having the highest proportion of boarders and charging the highest fees, suggestive of the existence and nature of an 'old boy network' at an institutional level.
翻译:本文探讨一组英国学校之间的体制联系的性质,包括可能被认为有助于“老男孩网络”的一大部分私立学校。分析基于双边确定的学校橄榄球联盟固定装置网络。在确定这些固定装置时,地理相近的至关重要性提供了空间“地面真相”,据以评估模型的性能。据发现,Bayesian人对潜在位置集群模型的适应性提供了所审查模型的最佳适用性。这种方法用来展示各种方法,共同提供对影响网络社区和边缘形成的各种因素的一致和细微的解释。同质在收费和寄宿人数比例方面的影响是显著的,有证据表明,这是由寄宿人数比例最高、收费最高的学校组成的社区驱动的,表明“老男孩网络”在机构一级的存在和性质。