SOCIOMETRY IN THE CLASSROOM:

HOW TO DO IT

VARIATIONS ON THE POSITIVE/NEGATIVE NOMINATION TECHNIQUES

Many of the traits in the Recognition Scale describe basic social competencies that have been shown to be strongly related to children's acceptance/rejection and general social status within the classroom. In a recent article by Sherman and Burgess (1985) a strong relationship was shown between several clusters of these traits and children's Classroom Social Distance Scores (see Table 1). Coie, Dodge and Coppotelli (1982) also presented evidence demonstrating similarly strong relationships between several basic social skill traits and both positive and negative nomination data (see Table 2). This technique can be quite helpful in identifying the reasons why particular children maintain their classroom social status. Intervention using a variety of social skills training procedures can be helpful in changing the classroom climate. Work with individual children may sometimes be required. Work with the entire group is also sometimes advisable (see Vacha, et. Al., 1979, for an entire two year curriculum focusing on enhancing 4th to 6th grade children's classroom climates.

NON-VERBAL TECHNIQUES.

Sometimes teachers in the lower elementary grades (pre-school and kindergarten through the second grade) find that their children cannot read a list of names. One solution is to take photographic portraits of the children, either using the annual year book pictures or sometimes taking fast developing polaroid photographs. Then, the children are verbally asked the traditional positive and negative nomination questions with the added instruction that they select the three photographs of children they like the most or least. This technique requires an individual administration to each child, along with a little more direct recording of the children's responses by the teacher. From here on, though, all the rest of the procedures are the same. Shelly Hymel's (1983) article dealing with sociometric measurement in the preschool environment is a good reference for those interested in this area. Hymel (1983) also discusses another technique called the "paired-comparison" measure. "Hear a child is presented, in turn, with all possible pairs of peers within the group under consideration, and for each pair is asked to state a preference for one or the other peers according to some specified interpersonal criteria (e.g., '"Which one would you most like to play with?')," (p. 24) One main disadvantage to this technique is the amount of time required for administration, especially with preschoolers!

ANOTHER WAY OF DETERMINING SOCIAL STATUS

zLL = the z-score for the 'liked least' question

SOCIAL PREFERENCE (SP). After computing each child's zLM and zLL scores one can then go on to compute each child's Social Preference score which is as follows:

SP = zLM - zLL

The main idea behind this construct, Social Preference, is that the zLM score will obviously be a positive figure if zLM is greater than zLL, while if the zLM is less than zLL, the result will be a negative number. Negative numbers exist at one end of the continuum indicating very little preference, while positive scores indicate a strong preference. Scores in the middle, that is close to zero (0) indicate average social preference.

SOCIAL IMPACT (SI). Social Impact is the idea that whether or not children are liked by the group as a whole, or disliked by the group, the group is, nevertheless responsive to them. Therefore, both the zLM as well as the zLL scores are an important consideration. Thus the formula for Social Impact is as follows:

SI = zLM + zLL

Given these four computations [1) zLM, 2) zLL, 3) SP and 4) SI] one can then apply Boolian Logic to determine the five specific categories of social status:

• a) POPULAR = SP gt +1.00 AND zLM gt 0.0 and zll lt 0.0
  
• b) REJECTED = SP lt -1.0 AND zLM lt 0.0 and zLL gt 0.0
  
• c) NEGLECTED = SI lt -1.0 and zLM and zLL = 0.0
  
• d) CONTROVERSIAL = SI > +1.0 and zLM and zLL gt 0.0
  
• e) AVERAGE STATUS = any child whose scores cannot be fit into social categories a through d above.

One distinct advantage of standardizing children's scores - i.e., transforming their raw positive or negative nomination scores into "z-scores" - is that these z-scores make possible normative comparisons of individual in different environments. Obviously one factor effecting the children's raw scores is the size of the classroom group with which the child is being measured: eg., the difference in frequency of nominations in a large group may be substantially different than the frequency of nominations they receive in a different and "smaller" group. Sometimes teachers and wish to know the stability or similarity of a child's social status in different classrooms, or even over time (eg., do kids change or maintain their social status as they grow older?). The standardized z-scores provide an appropriate way of answering questions such as these because these standardized scores reflect normative standing in a group regardless of the constituency or size of the group.

SOCIAL DISTANCE: A SOCIOMETRIC RATING SYSTEM

• (1) Would like to have her/him as one of my best friends;
  
• (2) Would like to have her/him in my group but not as a close friend;
  
• (3) Would like to be with her/him once in awhile but not often or for long at a time;
  
• (4) Don't mind her/him being in our room but I don't want to have anything to do with her/him;
  
• (5) Wish she/he weren't in our room."

An example of the rating form appears in FIGURE 18 (this would be Ann's responses as in our example classroom displayed throughout FIGURES 1 - 17), and a blank template for reproduction/duplication appears in APPENDIX E AND F. Students are given a survey-matrix (FIGURE 18) in which the columns consisted of an alpha/vertical list of the children in their room, and the rows are labeled in the left margin with the 5-point rating continuum. Children are asked to indicate the statement which most nearly defines their feelings about each person(X). To identify who is doing the rating, each child is asked to circle their name. They are asked to "...put an astrix, '*' in the row which describes how you think most people would rate you." This is sometimes called the Personal Social Distance Rating. Great discrepancies between the Personal Social Distance Rating and the mean Classroom Social Distance ratings may indicate that a child is "out-of-touch" with their "Social Reality". Each child's mean social distance score can be computed by multiplying the appropriate weight times the frequency with which a child was checked off in each of the categories, and dividing by the number of raters (the size of the classroom minus one - the child who is being rated). Theoretically, the mean social distance scores, a continuous measure, can range from 1 to 5 and relatively low scores (1) would indicate less social distance, while relatively high scores (5) would indicate greater social distance. This social distance measure can then be analyzed contingent upon various attributes of both the raters' and ratees', such as their gender and age. Sherman (1984a, 1984b, 1984c, 1985), for example, has shown the importance of considering gender and age as potential moderating variables influencing the ratings which children both give and receive.

FIGURE 18

child/ranking	1 (ANN)	2 (BUD)	3 (DIANE)	4 (DORIS)	5	6	etc
(1)Would like to have him/her as one of my best friends	.	.	.	X	.	.	.
(2) Would like to have him/her in my group but not as a close friend.	.	X	X	.	.	.	.
(3) Would like to be with him/her once in awhile but not often or for long at a time.	*	.	.	.	.	.	X
(4)Don't mind him/her being in our room but I don't want to have anything to do with him/her.	.	.	.	.	X	X	.
(5)Wish he/she weren't in our room	.	.	.	.	.	.	.

The Classroom Social Distance Scale has many advantages over the positive or negative nomination technique discussed earlier. It's primary advantage is that every child within any given classroom contributes to the score each individual receives. When either the positive or negative nomination technique is used we see the "network" of friendships, but if no one nominates a child that is all we know about how others feel about him/her. A rating system is, then, much more precise AND INVOLVES THE ENTIRE CLASSROOM.

SOCIOMETRIC RANKING.

Another form of sociometric measure, somewhat similar to the sociometric "rating" strategy is called the "Sociometric Ranking." Here, once again, the children are given a list of names of their classroom peers. They are asked to "rank" the names from lowest to highest on the basis of some interpersonal criteria (eg., Rank the children from highest to lowest on the basis of who you would most prefer to play with, where a low ranking could indicate the lest preferred and a high ranking the most preferred.) The rankings which children receive from their peers are summed and divided by the number of children who did the rankings (the classroom size minus 1) to yield an "average rank score."

OBSERVATIONAL SCHEMES.

A sensitive teacher/researcher can also obtain a sense of children's popularity and social status simply by observing who interacts with who. This is done in free-play situations where the children have the freedom to interact with their peers: eg., at lunch time noting who sits with who; during recess noting who plays with whom. Sometimes the validity of social interaction is evaluated noting whether the interactions are positive approaches or negative ones. Cavallaro and Porter's (1980) research on preschool "at-risk" and normal children's peer preferences is an excellent example of naturalistic observational sociometric analysis (See Appendix G, Research Example No. 7). Observational analyses are sometimes used to confirm children's "paper-and-pencil" sociometric nominations and ratings.

GO TO APPENDICES

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