Employing a variation of the Small World technique for tracing social relations
in the context of a larger social structure, the instrumental uses of social relations
are examined in terms of the prestige and types of relations characteristic of
participants m the search process. The results show that successful chains tend
to involve participants of higher occupational prestige as the chains progress
before "dipping" down toward the target prestige level at the last link. Also, the
successful chains tend to utilize weak and infrequent social relations rather than
strong and frequent social relations.
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