# ABS-SOCI: An Agent-Based Simulator of Student Sociograms
## 4 Experimentation
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Index** & **n** & **Real Value** & **Mean of Simulated** & **Non-Significant Simulations** & **Hedge’ g Obtained** & **Effect Size of Simulation** \\  & & & **Values (SD)** & **Based on Binomial Test (C)** & **in Sensitivity Analysis** & **Small (C)** & **Medium (C)** & **Large (C)** \\ \hline \multicolumn{8}{c}{_First experimental phase_} \\  & & & & _Calibration with [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2000)_ & & & & \\ \hline IAg & 6 & 0.2667 & 0.2233 (0.1099) & 100 & 0.73 & 57 & 33 & 10 \\ ICg & 6 & 0.6667 & 0.6346 (0.1872) & 100 & 0.33 & 44 & 38 & 18 \\  & & & _Calibration with [PERSON] (S)_ & & & & \\ \cline{2-8} IAg & 17 & 0.0368 & 0.0196 (0.0101) & 100 & 0.39 & 82 & 18 & 0 \\ ICg & 17 & 0.5556 & 0.4840 (0.2168) & 87 & 0.43 & 35 & 38 & 27 \\  & & & _Valibration with [PERSON] (S)_ & & & & \\ \cline{2-8} IAg & 24 & 0.0688 & 0.0372 (0.0114) & 100 & 0.33 & 84 & 16 & 0 \\ ICg & 24 & 0.6441 & 0.5016 (0.1055) & 93 & 0.35 & 29 & 61 & 10 \\ \hline \multicolumn{8}{c}{_Second experimental phase_} \\  & & & & _Calibration with [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2000)_ & & & & \\ \hline IAg & 6 & 0.2667 & 0.2273 (0.1003) & 100 & 0.73 & 58 & 28 & 14 \\ ICg & 6 & 0.6667 & 0.6009 (0.1818) & 96 & 0.33 & 65 & 28 & 7 \\ \hline \multicolumn{8}{c}{_Calibration with [PERSON] (S)_} \\ \hline \hline IAg & 24 & 0.0688 & 0.0705 (0.0157) & 100 & 0.33 & 99 & 1 & 0 \\ ICg & 24 & 0.6441 & 0.5882 (0.0725) & 99 & 0.35 & 77 & 22 & 1 \\ \hline \multicolumn{8}{c}{_Valibration with [PERSON] (S)_} \\ \hline \hline IAg & 17 & 0.0368 & 0.0276 (0.0126) & 90 & 0.39 & 90 & 10 & 0 \\ ICg & 17 & 0.5556 & 0.5585 (0.1691) & 99 & 0.43 & 49 & 33 & 18 \\ \hline \multicolumn{8}{c}{_Third experimental phase_ (_init the same calibration as in the previous phase_)} \\  & & & & _Valibration with the Programming Course_ & & & \\ \hline IAg & 12 & 0.1667 & 0.1461 (0.018) & 100 & 0.41 & 99 & 1 & 0 \\ ICg & 12 & 0.6111 & 0.5539 (0.0324) & 99 & 0.32 & 96 & 4 & 0 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: Real and simulated values, percentages of non-significant simulations and of simulations with small, medium and large effect size, and Hedges’ g obtained in sensitivity analysis for the Index of Association of a group (IAg) and the Index of Coherence of a group (ICg) in calibration and validation studies. Note: \(n\) = sample size of calibration and validation studies. In order to obtain a second validation, calibration and validation cases were interchanged. In this second phase of experimentation, ABS-SOCI was calibrated with the case of [PERSON] and [PERSON] and the case of [PERSON], changing its constant values and matrices. Then, ABS-SOCI was executed and compared with the case of [PERSON], which was not used in the calibration of this second experimental phase. The case of [PERSON] was selected for this validation instead of [PERSON] and [PERSON] because the results were more representative due to its larger number of students. In addition, the current work discarded the possibility of performing a validation with the scenario of [PERSON] and [PERSON] due to its small sample size, which yields a low sensitivity as shown in Table 3. Figure 12 shows the temporal evolution of sociometrics in one of the simulation executions in the validation of [PERSON] scenario. ABS-SOCI was further assessed in a third experimental phase. The main difference of this experimentation from the previous ones is that the simulator departed from an existing sociogram that is not neutral. In particular, the initial sociogram had a cohesion of \(IAg=0.1364\) and a coherence of \(ICg=0.5454\). The initial sociogram was extracted from a group of students of a Programming Course in the University of Zaragoza. This experimentation used the same calibration as in the previous experimental phase. The simulated outcomes were compared with the real outcomes after 20 class hours (represented with 20 simulation iterations).