Despite the importance of studying the social tie formation behaviour of individuals and its implications on the social fabric of a nation, there is a paucity of empirical analysis of social networks in Malaysia.6,7 This research note aims to fill this gap by studying what how Malaysian university students form social ties. [...] 5: Odds of a social tie increase for two individuals of the same ethnicity across all types of ties in UM and for the closeness tie in UNM Odds ratios of the ethnic homophily term for the four social ties in both university samples Source: Author’s estimates based on complete network data generated through a self-administered survey. [...] On the other hand, 19 out of 21 eligible respondents in the Economics Year 3 class in UNM entered the survey, which means that the results likely paint an accurate picture of social relations in the class. [...] These can be interpreted as the increase in the odds of observing the given network in response to two individuals sharing the same characteristic, be it ethnicity, gender or speaking the same language, holding the rest of the network fixed. [...] The lack of variation in the data may have conflated the effect of SMK on ethnic homophily with the effect of ethnic homophily itself.
Related Organizations
- Pages
- 28
- Published in
- Malaysia
Table of Contents
- Written by Hanson Chong With contributions from Jason Wee 1
- Institute of Strategic International Studies ISIS Malaysia 1
- September 2024 1
- About ISIS Malaysia 3
- About the contributors 3
- Foreword 4
- Executive summary 5
- 1. Introduction and background 6
- Education and social-tie formation 6
- Fig. 1 Ethnic stratification in primary schools intensified between 2014 and 2024 7
- 2. Data 8
- Fig. 2 Ethnicity determines the type of primary school attended but almost all UM students attended SMK at the secondary level 8
- Fig. 3 UNM students attended a variety of secondary schools 9
- Fig. 4 Total of 8 social networks are studied with 4 types of social ties for each university 10
- 3. Analysis 10
- 3.1. Determinants of social tie formation among Malaysian students 10
- Fig. 5 Odds of a social tie increase for two individuals of the same ethnicity across all types of ties in UM and for the closeness tie in UNM 11
- 3.1.1. Ethnicity 11
- 3.1.2. Language 12
- Fig. 6 Odds of social tie in UNM increase when 2 individuals speak Bahasa Malaysia 13
- Fig. 7 Higher proportion of UM students report greater BM proficiency 13
- Fig. 8 Odds of a professional social tie increase when 2 individuals speak Mandarin Chinese in both samples 14
- 3.1.3. Gender 14
- Fig. 9 Odds of a social tie increase for 2 individuals of the same gender for all types of social types except for job opening network 15
- 3.2. Factors that affect ethnic homophily 15
- 3.2.1. Bahasa Malaysia 15
- Fig. 10 Native fluency in Bahasa Malaysia moderates the effect of ethnic homophily downwards 16
- 3.2.2. Upbringing 16
- Fig. 11 Upbringing in an ethnically homogenous district where one belongs to the majority moderates the effect of ethnic homophily upwards 17
- 3.2.3. Gender 17
- Fig. 12 Women exhibit lower levels of ethnic homophily 18
- 4. Conclusion 18
- Endnotes 19
- References 20
- Appendices 22
- Appendix A Survey methodology 22
- Appendix B Exponential random graph models 23
- Appendix C Moderation analysis of ERGM terms 23
- Table 1 Homophily terms for ethnicity gender and language are all statistically significant predictors of at 24
- Table 2 Bahasa Malaysia upbringing attending SMK and gender affects the degree of ethnic homophily among university students 25
