The community studies are personal in the sense that power is associated with specific individuals. The estimation procedures are designed to determine the power of an individual. This power, in turn, is viewed as some function of the resources (economic, social, etc.), position (office, role, etc.), and skill (choice of behavior, choice of allies, etc.); but the study and the analysis assume that it is meaningful to aggregate resource power, position power, and skill power into a single variable associated with the individual.
-Procedures
The procedure most generally used involves some variation of asking individuals within the community to assess the relative power of other individuals in the community. Essentially the panel is given the following task: On the basis of past experience (both your own and that of other people with whom you have communicated), estimate the power of the following individuals.
-A second procedure involves the direct observation of decision outcome and prior preferences over a series of decisions. Essentially, we define a mold relating power to decisions, draw a sample of observation, and estimate the power of individuals on the basis of that model and those observations