UCINET Quick Start Guide

This guide provides a quick introduction to UCINET. It assumes that the software has been installed
with the data in the folder C:\Program Files\Analytic Technologies\Ucinet 6\DataFiles and this has
been left as the default directory.

When UCINET is started the following window appears.

Submenu buttons

Display dataset

Run Netdraw
Exit button Command Line
Text editor (notepad)
Matrix Editor Interface
DL editor

Change default directory button

Current default directory

The submenu buttons give access to all of the routines in UCINET and these are grouped into File,
Data, Transform, Tools, Network, Visualize, Options and Help. Note that the buttons located below
these are simply fast ways of calling routines in the submenus. The default directory given at the
bottom is where UCINET picks up any data and stores any files (unless otherwise specified) this
directory can be changed by clicking on the button to the right.

Running a routine

To run a UCINET routine we usually need to specify a UCINET dataset and give some parameters.
Where possible UCINET selects some default parameters which the user can change if required.
Note that UCINET comes with a number of standard datasets and these will be located in the default
directory. When a routine has been run there is some textual output which appears on the screen
and usually a UCINET datafile contain the results that again will be stored in the default directory.

We shall run the degree centrality routine to calculate the centralities of all the actors in a standard
UCINET dataset called TARO. First we highlight Network|Centrality and Power|Degree and then click

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This will bring up a box as follows Click to open a pick
file box

Click to run the routine

Click to cancel

Click to access
help associated
with this routine

Defaults options and parameters

Name of UCINET datafiles
can be changed by clicking.
created by this routine. Can
be changed by typing over

If you click on the help button then a help screen will open which looks like this. The help file gives a
detailed description of the routine, explains the parameters and describes the output that will
appear in the log file and on the screen.

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Close the help file and either by clicking on the pickfile button or by typing the name select the TARO
data for analysis as follows.

Now click OK to run the routine to obtain the following.

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This is a text file giving the results of the routine. Note you can scroll down to see more of the file.
This file can be saved or copied and pasted into a word processing package. When UCINET is closed
this file will be deleted. Close this file.

Note when the program was run we also created two new UCINET files one called TARO-deg the
other called TARO-degcz. We can look at the new UCINET file using the Display dataset button. This
is the D button that appears just below the Tools submenu (see the first diagram). Clicking on the D
goes straight to the open file menu and bypasses some of the display options that are available if
you used Data|Display. Click on display and select TARO-deg. You should get the following

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 Note that this file has all the measures of centrality but does not have the descriptive statistics
produced in the log file.

Using the Matrix editor

The Matrix editor can be used to amend or view data. It is also useful for transferring UCINET data
(such as centrality scores) to Microsoft Excel or SPSS. Note that although the matrix editor can be
used for entering data the dl editor provides a more sophisticated and flexible way of entering data
and this is covered later in this introductory guide. If you click the Matrix Editor button or under
data click on Matrix Editor you will open up the Matrix Editor and obtain the following. Note we
Set the
have annotated the important buttons and areas of the editor below.
network or
Click to clear or matrix size
start a new sheet here
including
more levels
Click Transform or s
and Fill to add
zeros into empty
cells
Area Symmetric
for mode
labels copies cell
values into
Area for data, numerical other half
values only

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To see what a dataset looks like in the editor click file then open and select PADGETT. This is a non-
symmetric binary data set with two relations and labels. Once open it will look like this.

We see the two relations PADGM and PADGB in the bottom left, clicking on the tabs changes sheet
and we are viewing different relations. The labels are repeated along the rows and columns and are
in the shaded area. We see the data has 16 actors as shown by the dimensions box on the right. This
data can be edited and saved from the spreadsheet.

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 Running Netdraw

Click on the Netdraw button to launch Netdraw. This results in a new window which looks like
this. We have annotated the most important buttons.
Change Hide or
Change label
Restore reveal Hide or
shape of size
nodes labels reveal
nodes
arrows

Clear
window

Load a file Arrange Remove Show only Change

Colour
nodes isolates main node Hide or reveal
nodes
component size edge weights

To use Netdraw it is important to load in a network first. We shall load in a standard UCINET dataset
collected by Dave Krackhardt. Click on the load a file button and type or select the file Krack-High-
Tec

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Then click OK and you should see something like this.

You will now see this data has three relations Advice, Friendship and Reports to. If a relation is ticked
then the edges relating to it are displayed. We shall now bring in an attribute file associated with
this data called High-Tec-Attributes. Click on the load a file button again load the file but also click
the radio button for node attributes under Type of Data so you have

Note you can also click the button just to the right of the load button (with an A) and this will open
up the same box but with the attribute button selected. Click on Transform> Node attribute editor
and you will see the node attribute editor open up as follows.

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You can use this editor to change or add in new attributes.

We are going to size the nodes by age, colour them by department and shape them according to
level. Close the attribute editor and click on the colour node button. This will open the color box click
the select attribute button and select department as follows

This will give 5 colours for the five departments. Now click on the change shape of nodes button and
go through the same process but selecting level and clicking on the tick at the bottom of the box.
This will produce three shapes. To size the nodes according to age you need to select

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Properties>Nodes>Symbols>Size>Attribute-Based and then select Age leaving the other values as
defaults. This should result in the following.

To export the diagram for use in a publication or to read into a word processing package use
File>Save Diagram As>Metafile. To save the diagram as a file you can see again in Netdraw you need
to use File>Save Data As>Vna.

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Using the dl editor in UCINET

The UCINET spreadsheet editor is useful for making changes or for viewing data but is not well
suited for importing larger datasets in which the data is not typically arranged in an adjacency matrix
format. UCINET supports a variety of data formats that are accessed through an editor called the dl
editor which is launched by pressing the button to the right of the spreadsheet editor in UCINET
which looks like this

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When the editor is launched you should obtain the following.

Data format selection

There are a number of data formats supported but we will just look at two. The data formats can be
selected from a pull down list by clicking the arrow to the right of the data format selection box. The
full matrix is the same as using the normal spreadsheet editor. Our first format is called Nodelist1
(ego alter1 alter2 ...), this format lists each node followed by the nodes it is adjacent to. The
following is an example, note we have clicked the force symmetry box in the output options.

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The first number in each row gives the starting node of an edge the numbers that follow in the same
row are a list of end nodes. Hence the first row 1 3 4 5 states that actor 1 is connected to actors 3, 4
and 5. The second row states that actor 5 is connected to actor 6 and so on. Note that there is no
order amongst the rows nor within the rows. Actor 2 has no end nodes listed and hence is an isolate.
The network corresponding to this linked list is given below.

1 4

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Note that the entries in the spreadsheet are labels and so we can use names rather than numbers. If
the data is directed then the arc goes from the start node to the end node. The following is an
example showing a directed network with labels.

If the data is valued then we cannot use the nodelist format; an alternative is the Edgelist1 (ego
alter [value]) format. This format has three entries per line and is of the form start node, end node ,
value. The following is an example.

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In this example we see that Martin has a connection to Steve with a value of 5. It should be noted
that the data in the spreadsheet cannot be saved except as a UCINET file and hence it is a good idea
to construct these in an excel spreadsheet and copy and paste or import them. Once the entry is
complete the file can be saved in UCINET by clicking the File button and selecting Save UCINET

dataset. To clear the spreadsheet click the on the top left hand side.

There are many features of UCINET and Netdraw that we have not mentioned but hopefully this
guide will get you started.

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