Freeman’s Approach to Degree Centrality:

  • Centrality is based on connections between nodes in the network
  • Measure in-degree and the out-degree and degree percentage of entire network for each node
  • Can measure network statistics such as mean, standard deviation, etc.
  • Network Centralization calculation compares a network to the perfect star network of the same size
    1. A star network of size N (nodes)
      • Has one node whose in-degree is N-1 and whose out-degree is 0
      • Other N-1 nodes have out-degree 1 and in-degree 0
    2. Network Centralization = (N * D – m) / ((N-1)(N-2)) where N is the number of nodes, D is the max degree whether that is in or out, and m is the number of edges

For more information:

  1. https://faculty.ucr.edu/~hanneman/nettext/C10_Centrality.html#Freeman

References to use of this measure in literature:

  1. Collaboration and Integration of Community-Based Health and Human Services in a Nonprofit Managed Care System
  2. Interorganization Relationships Among HIV/AIDS Service Organizations in Baltimore: A Network Analysis
  3. Peers, schools, and adolescent cigarette smoking