Statistical modelling of the group structure of social networks

•This research evaluates the identification of latent classes in social networks.•For the historical network studied, the model identification is consistent with the original study.•A new Bayesian model comparison method is used to determine the number of latent classes.•This is based on the posterior distributions of the competing model deviances and of their class membership probabilities.•This finds that two classes are sufficient.

This research evaluates the identification of group structure in social networks through the latent class model and a new Bayesian model comparison method for the number of latent classes. The approach is applied to a well-known network of women in Natchez Mississippi. The latent class analysis reproduces the group structure of the women identified by the original sociologists.