Sociometric Status

Sociometric status is a measurement that reflects the degree to which someone is liked or disliked by their peers as a group. While there are some studies that have looked at sociometric status among adults, the measure is primarily used with children and adolescents to make inferences about peer relations and social competence.

Developmental psychology

In developmental psychology, this system has been used to examine children's status in peer groups, its stability over time, the characteristics that determine it, and the long-term implications of one's popularity or rejection by peers.

The methodology

Generally, sociometric status is assessed through asking peers to rate an individual’s status in the peer group. Two of the most widely used methods that are used for this are peer nomination and peer ratings. Terry, R., & Coie, J. D. (1991). A comparison of methods for defining sociometric status among children. ''Developmental Psychology'', ''27''(5), 867–880. Jiang, X. L., & Cillessen, A. H. (2005). Stability of continuous measures of sociometric status: A meta-analysis. ''Developmental Review'', ''25''(1), 1–25. The peer ratings method asks the participants to assess, in numerical terms, how much they like the other peers in the group. The sociometric status is then calculated by taking an average of the ratings. The peer nomination technique, on the other hand, asks children to choose who they like and dislike most from the group. Then, the liked-most and liked-least ratings are interpreted to categorize children into sociometric variables. At first, researchers used only 2 categories: accepted and rejected children.Dodge, K. A., Coie, J. D., & Brakke, N. P. (1982). Behavior patterns of socially rejected and neglected preadolescents: The roles of social approach and aggression. ''Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology'', ''10''(3), 389–409. Coie, J. D., Dodge, K. A., & Coppotelli, H. (1982). Dimensions and types of social status: A cross-age perspective. ''Developmental Psychology'', ''18''(4), 557–570. However, Coie, Dodge and Coppotelli (1982) argued that such grouping doesn’t capture the true complexity of sociometric status, as it fails to distinguish between two low-status groups – actively rejected children and socially neglected ones. They proposed that children be classified into 5 groups:
* Popular children: Children are designated as popular if they receive many positive nominations.
* Rejected children: Children are designated as rejected if they receive many negative nominations and few positive nominations.
* Neglected children: Children are designated as neglected if they receive few positive or negative nominations. These children are not especially liked or disliked by peers, and tend to go unnoticed.
* Average children: Children are designated as average if they receive an average number of both positive and negative nominations.
* Controversial children: Children are designated as controversial if they receive many positive and many negative nominations. They are said to be liked by quite a few children, but also disliked by quite a few.
While peer ratings/nominations are the most commonly used method to assess sociometric status, they are often accompanied by teacher assessment, observations, or even self-assessment.Hatzichristou, C., & Hopf, D. (1996). A Multiperspective comparison of Peer Sociometric status groups in childhood and adolescence. ''Child Development, 67''(3), 1085.

Descriptions of specific sociometric groups

Popular children

Popular children tend to display higher social skills than other groups, and they are often described as cooperators or leaders. They can easily think of effective ways to start interactions or resolve conflicts with their peers, and they can recognise other people’s emotions better. Richard, B. A., & Dodge, K. A. (1982). Social maladjustment and problem solving in school-aged children. ''Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology'', ''50''(2), 226–233. Edwards, R., Manstead, A. S., & Macdonald, C. J. (1984). The relationship between children's sociometric status and ability to recognize facial expressions of emotion. ''European Journal of Social Psychology'', ''14''(2), 235–238. Most studies find that they display less aggressive and disruptive behaviours than rejected or controversial children, but it has been suggested that this isn’t an inherent characteristic. Some popular children have aggressive or antisocial traits but are still liked or even looked up to. Rodkin, P. C., Farmer, T. W., Pearl, R., & Van Acker, R. (2000). Heterogeneity of popular boys: Antisocial and prosocial configurations. ''Developmental Psychology'', ''36''(1), 14–24.

Rejected children

Rejected children score worse on social competence than popular children. While they approach their peers just as much, or even more than popular ones, their initiations of contact are usually turned down. Most studies show that they display more aggressive behaviours than other groups of children, and they tend to have lower communicative skills.Van der Wilt, F., Van der Veen, C., Van Kruistum, C., & Van Oers, B. (2019). Why do children Become rejected by their peers? A review of studies into the relationship between Oral communicative competence and Sociometric status in childhood. ''Educational Psychology Review'', ''31''(3), 699–724. They also perform worse academically, struggling to stay focused on their assigned academic tasks. Lastly, rejected children experience higher rates of anxiety and depression than other sociometric groups. Reijntjes, A., Kamphuis, J. H., Prinzie, P., & Telch, M. J. (2010). Peer victimization and internalizing problems in children: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. ''Child Abuse & Neglect, 34''(4), 244–252.

Neglected children

Neglected children are generally the least prosocial group, frequently described as shy. Because of this, they aren’t particularly liked nor disliked by their peers. However, this doesn’t translate into them being more lonely than average children. Furthermore, despite their low social skills, they manage to outperform others in academic achievements, having higher levels of motivation and independence.

Controversial children

Controversial children, combining characteristics of popular and rejected profiles, are very liked by some peers, but actively disliked by others. They are visible, active, assertive, and extremely sociable, often perceived as leaders. At the same time, they are frequently described as aggressive and disruptive (mostly boys) or arrogant (mostly girls). The evidence behind their academic performance is inconclusive – some studies describe them as “slow at school”, while others assess their performance as good.

Stability of sociometric status

Whether the sociometric status stays stable across time is important because it indicates the stability of actual peer relations and liking/disliking mechanisms in a group.

As a recent meta-analysis study found, the stability of sociometric status depends on age, gender, the interval between measuring times, and the publication year of the study.

The older the children, the more solidified the structure in their peer group, and so, the more stable their sociometric ratings. Bukowski and Newcomb (1985) found that sociometric status remained stable in school-aged children even when there were changes in the size and composition of the group due to transitioning from elementary to middle school. Preschool children, on the other hand, tend to be more unreliable in their results, especially when using the peer nominations technique.Asher, S. R., Singleton, L. C., Tinsley, B. R., & Hymel, S. (1979). A reliable sociometric measure for preschool children. ''Developmental Psychology, 15''(4), 443–444. However, when the rating-scale measure is used, the stability improves; though, this may only be a result of a statistical artifact.

When it comes to gender, a larger proportion of boys in the group is correlated with lower stability, but the exact mechanism for this association is unknown.

Stability also decreases as the interval between measuring points increases.

Lastly, as the publication year increases, the children’s liking preferences become less stable, while their disliking patterns become more stable, at least in the US. A possible explanation of this phenomenon is that over the recent decades, there has been an increase in anxiety levels of American children. It may be that as the children become more anxious over time, they start focusing on who they dislike more than who they like.

Long-term implications

Whether the emotional or behavioural consequences of a child’s sociometric status follow the child into adolescence or even adulthood is a question of great importance.

As it turns out, the children’s aggressive tendencies can translate into their later life, as both rejected and controversial boys (the most aggressive groups) have a higher chance of committing violent or non-violent offendings in adolescence.Broidy, L. M., Nagin, D. S., Tremblay, R. E., Bates, J. E., Brame, B., Dodge, K. A., Vitaro, F. (2003). Developmental trajectories of childhood disruptive behaviors and Adolescent delinquency: A six-site, cross-national study. ''Developmental Psychology, 39''(2), 222–245. Notably, this does not seem to be the pattern for aggressive girls.

Furthermore, the symptoms of anxiety and depression that rejected children often face can be prolonged into the future, as it has been found that socially isolated children have a greater risk of developing mental health problems in adolescence or adulthood.Prinstein, M. J., & La Greca, A. M. (2004). Childhood peer rejection and aggression as predictors of adolescent girls' externalizing and health risk behaviors: A 6-Year longitudinal study. ''Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72''(1), 103–112. Prinstein, M. J., & Aikins, J. W. (2004). Cognitive moderators of the longitudinal association between peer rejection and adolescent depressive symptoms. ''Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 32''(2), 147–158. It is argued that it is not only that peer rejection plays a role in eliciting depression, but depressive symptoms can also lead to rejection.Platt, B., Kadosh, K. C., & Lau, J. Y. (2013). The role of peer rejection in adolescent depression. ''Depression and Anxiety, 30''(9), 809–821.

It seems, therefore, that social acceptance plays a vital role in one’s social and emotional adaptation. Low social status children may lack the opportunity to develop their social skills, which leads to them being even more isolated in future interactions, and this positive feedback loop is difficult to break. Oden, S., & Asher, S. R. (1977). Coaching children in social skills for friendship making. ''Child Development, 48''(2), 495. Hence, social skills training programs are often implemented to help children to adapt to their social environments and prevent these future consequences. The sociometric status is an especially useful measure there, as it is used to both identify the children in need, and assess the effectiveness of those programs.

Positive psychology

While socioeconomic measures of status do not correspond to greater happiness, measures of sociometric status (status compared to people encountered face-to-face on a daily basis) do correlate to increased subjective well-being, above and beyond the effects of extroversion and other factors.{{cite journal, last=Anderson, first=C., author2=Kraus, M. W. , author3=Galinsky, A. D. , author4= Keltner, D. , title=The Local-Ladder Effect: Social Status and Subjective Well-Being, journal=Psychological Science, date=31 May 2012, volume=23, issue=7, pages=764–771, doi=10.1177/0956797611434537 , pmid=22653798

See also

* Sociometry

References

Psychological attitude