Triadic analysis of affiliation networks

The widely-used notion of triadic closure has been conceptualized and measured in a variety of ways, most famously the clustering coefficient. This paper proposes a measure of triadic closure in affiliation networks designed to control for the influence of bicliques. In order to avoid arbitrariness, the paper introduces a triadic framework for affiliation networks, within which a range of possible statistics can be considered; it then takes an axiomatic approach to narrowing this range. The paper conducts an instrumental assessment of the proposed statistic alongside two previous proposals, for reliability, validity, and usefulness. Finally, these tools demonstrate their collective applicability in a multi-perspective investigation into triadic closure in several empirical social networks.