Christopher McCarty

About

Christopher McCarty, Ph.D., is a Professor of Anthropology and the Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida. He serves as the Director of the UF Bureau of Economic and Business Research and has a background in cultural anthropology with a specialization in social network analysis. His research focuses on social network analysis, personal network analysis, collaboration networks, acculturation, disasters, and survey research. McCarty is widely recognized in the field of social network analysis for his expertise in applying personal network analysis to a broad range of topics, including substance abuse, addiction, and immigrant transnationalism. He developed the open source software program Egonet, which is extensively used by researchers across multiple disciplines, particularly in health care research. McCarty has contributed significantly to methods for collecting and analyzing personal network data and has applied these methods to various substantive research problems, including migrant studies, disaster response, hypertension, and scientific collaboration. He also co-developed the Network Scale-up Method (NSUM), a technique for estimating the size of hard-to-count populations, which has been adopted internationally for public health research. As the director of the UF Survey Research Center, he has overseen large-scale survey projects and contributed to survey methodology, especially in estimating populations and response…

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Science
• Information Retrieval
• Demography
• Library science
• Gender studies
• Ecology

Selected publications

• Developing a model for AI Across the curriculum: Transforming the higher education landscape via innovation in AI literacy

  Computers and Education Artificial Intelligence · 2023 · 511 citations

  Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a ubiquitous concept and tool already found across society and an integral part of everyday life. As such, basic understanding and knowledge of AI should be a critical component of student education to foster successful global citizens. This position paper describes one possible path to address potential gaps in AI education and integrate AI across the curriculum at a traditional research university. The University of Florida (UF) is infusing AI across the curricu…

  PublisherDOI

• How do migrants’ processes of social embedding unfold over time?

  Global Networks · 2020 · 94 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract In this article we investigate how migrants’ processes of social (dis‐) embedding in local and transnational contexts unfold over time and illustrate their driving forces. Drawing on unique longitudinal, mixed‐methods social network data of 77 transnational migrants in Barcelona, Spain, we were able to capture changes in social relationships at a micro‐level. We found that migrant embedding is far from a linear process. In many regards, the observed network dynamics are similar to those…

  DOI

• Great minds think alike, or do they often differ? Research topic overlap and the formation of scientific teams

  Journal of Informetrics · 2020 · 42 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Understanding social network support, composition, and structure among cancer caregivers

  Psycho-Oncology · 2023-01-02 · 19 citations

  articleOpen access

  OBJECTIVE: We examined the social network support, composition, and structure of pediatric cancer caregivers. METHODS: We used a self-report survey to collect egocentric social network data from 107 caregivers of pediatric cancer patients and calculated descriptive statistics to examine cancer-related support network composition, function, and structure. We then ran logistic regressions to examine the relationships between network characteristics and overall satisfaction with social support. RES…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Collecting a large number of alters in egocentric network research: A comparative analysis of three approaches

  Social Networks · 2025-09-03 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  This article presents an analysis of the impact of the number of alters elicited in an ego network on the structural properties of those networks. There continues to be debate about the pros and cons of eliciting a fixed number of alters for each respondent versus allowing the respondent to list as many or few alters as they would like. This article explores a random assignment of respondents to three treatment groups – (1) a fixed number of alters set at 30, (2) a variable number of alters up t…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Development of a Social Network Measure of Acculturation and its Application to Immigrant Populations in South Florida and Northeastern Spain

  NSF · $150k · 2004–2006

• Social Network Analysis of the Collaborative Interaction of Scientists in Academic and Non-academic Settings

  NSF · $356k · 2007–2010

Frequent coauthors

• Peter D. Killworth

  National Oceanography Centre

  21 shared

• H. Russell Bernard

  Arizona State University

  20 shared

• Gene A. Shelley

  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

  16 shared

• José Luís Molina

  Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

  15 shared

• Eugene C. Johnsen

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  14 shared

• Raffaele Vacca

  University of Florida

  11 shared

• Miranda J. Lubbers

  11 shared

• Connie J. Mulligan

  University of Florida

  10 shared

Education

• PhD, Anthropology

  University of Florida

  1992

• MA, Anthropology

  University of Florida

  1985

• BA, Anthropology

  West Virginia University

  1980

Awards & honors

• Co-organizer Sunbelt Social Networks Conference (2008, 2011,…
• NIH Social Networks and Health panelist (2011-2012)
• NSF Program Officer for Cultural Anthropology (2013-2014)

Similar researchers at University of Florida

• Jeff Johnsonh-98
• James Davidsonh-40
• McCarty, Christopherh-40