How do we interact with people in our everyday life? Who are the people we are connected to? What kind of support do we obtain from them? How can we provide assistance to them? How do conflicts emerge and how are they dealt with in our social circles? And what do these relationships mean for us? Social network analysis is a research approach that has tried to answer these and many other questions by examining the patterns of relations between people. This book explores the formal aspects of social networks, as well as the way people interpret them. By bringing together qualitative methods with social network analysis techniques this book shows how to plan and conduct empirical research in the analysis of social structures.