On about 1% of response occasions, participants named a great many others as best friends. Because such extreme degree outliers (EDOs) on the outdegree distribution suggest a different interpretation of best friend from most students, and because EDOs can destabilize the SABM iterative estimation algorithm, we treated all out-choices as missing (i.e., unknown) in these instances. Others’ choices of the EDO as a best friend were retained, however, and those not chosen by the EDO were still considered valid (zero rather than missing). This model-based available data approach is consistent with results reported by Huisman and Steglich (2008), where a similar scheme produced the best results.
