The Constitution, Maintenance And Expansion Of College Students' Social Networks

The research of social networks is an important branch of the Sociology. In my country and other countries, a large number of theoretical studies and empirical studies have shown that social networks is an important social source which can provides social surpports for a person in his or her daily life. Not only helps individuals to establish good interpersonal relationships in the process of social interaction, but also provides guidance and support in job-seeking,jobbing,promotion and personal achievements.In the previous studies, there was little research on college students who as the main groups were studied. Now the increasing pressure of learning and employment have greatly affected students' psychological and physiological health and personal achievements.So it is necessary to do a research about the students' whole social networks that to better guide them for getting more social capital and social supports.This research paper uses for references the related theories and methods from studies of social networks at home and abroad. The paper studied the college students' personal characteristics in the empirical research methods and collected 400 samples of students from 4 university in chongqing. This research studied from the constructures of social networks , then investigated the constitute of network range of network,density of network and composition of students' network. We found that most students keep their range of network in 30-50 peoples, at the middle level. As for the density of network in an emotional intimacy dimension , we concluded that there have been some strong ties between the students and their parents,classmates,roommates, former friends and lovers in the relationships of social network. In the view of previous studies,the relationship of relatives was in the strong tie,however, this research paper presents that it only be in an middle tie. In the composition of network , students tend to contact with the people who has the same background in sex,age and qualification.And the ties of homphily is strong.Social networks are important means to get the social support.So in this research paper,we divided social networks into emotional networks,tool-oriental networks and mixed networks from the perspective of network functions on the basis of Weber's theories: value rationality and goal rationality.Also, combing with the network density between the members ,we studied the using of social networks. The results showed that the relations of roommates and classmates have the same strong ties of network density.They can provided the most part of social support, which include the support of emotion,substance^ information and accompanied. Parents as another strong ties of network member, mainly to provide emotional support and material support for students.Lovers to provide more emotional support and accompanied support than other types. Teachers are one of the source in support of information. All students inclined to get social support from the emotion al type and mixed type.The relationship will become weaker gradually, if there is no communication and interaction with the members in the net of strong ties. Even the relationship will elapse if no proper communication with the members in weak ties. So, we should maintain our social network properly to keep our relationship. The result of the method which to maintain the relationship shows that the two mam methods of maintaining the relationship are emotional support and social accompany,which counts 40.2% and 31.4% respectively. The information support in the second position, which counts 25.9% of the whole. In this type.there is few students use substances to maintain the relationships. The main maintained objects are the members in strong ties, while there is no object in weak ties.Especially, the new acquaintances can hardly get the active maintainces from the students . Besides maintaining the present relationship, we should pay more attention on building our new relationship. The bigger the social net range we expand, the more and better social support we get. The research shows that, the main methods the colledge students use to expand the range of relationship are media expand and strong-ties-type expand. And the newly acquaintances who are known less than 3 months only in the position of 1-5 collum, which in an relatively low level.Finally, on the basis of the findings of the study above , we analysis and discuss the problems of students social networks.Also some suggestions are given in this paper to help university students adjust their personal social networks properly for getting more and more social resources and social supports in the future studies and life.