Assessing Children's Sociometric Status: Issues and the Application of Social Network Analysis
Keywords:
AnalysisAbstract
A child's sociometric status has been recognized as an important predictor of future social and psychological adjustment. Most of the extant developmental research has employed measures based on summary statistics obtained from either peer nominations or ratings. Although these measures demonstrate adequate reliability and predictive validity, alternative methods of analysis using the sociometric matrix are widely used in other areas of social science to examine social networks. In this article, we review sociometric research with children and introduce social network analysis with examples from our work with children and adults. We discuss applications, make suggestions for further research, and provide references to a technical introduction.
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