Sociometry is defined as the measurement of social choice, which means that the decisions – conscious and unconscious – that are made with regards to inter-personal affiliation. The measurement tools are used to facilitate change, and it addresses multiple aspects of human connection. As humans, we are constantly choosing those who we choose to affiliate with, and sociometry helps to concretize and explore all these choices. Feeling isolated, chosen, invisible, unchosen, rejected, or having a star status are all issues that come up in the sociometric investigation and also naturally emerges in groups, and as such, sociometry allows one to study a group in its concrete form.
The sudden developments in the research of small group behavior, the realization that the group’s behavior is, to a large extent, determined by the communication patterns that develop as well as the nature of the structure(s) that are formed as a result of the interaction, the fact that teachers are often speaking of ‘difficult’ classes where almost everything tends to go wrong and also ‘good’ when the tone changes, and lastly, the finding that the classroom climate highly influences the learning and behavior of an individual, all point one single thing, and that is group behavior in a classroom is becoming an important study for both counselors and teachers. To promote sociometry in classrooms, teachers will definitely need some professional knowledge to understand, predict, or improve classroom group behavior. They are also required to have the skills necessary to transform the classes into cohesive groups with good morale, not to mention working co-operatively for the social, emotional, and intellectual development of the students.
In classrooms, sociometry becomes quite useful when looking at the choices made by the students as individuals and together as a group. Now, when using sociometry in the group, there are four main basic positions that these individuals occupy; rejection star, a positive star, isolate, and star of incongruity. A rejection star is a student who receives the most negative choices, while the positive star is the one that receives the greatest number of positive choices. For the isolate, the student doesn’t choose or gets chosen based upon specific criteria and as for the star of incongruity, he or she receives the biggest number of incongruous choices.
How is Sociometry helpful in managing a classroom?
Identifying Social Status in the Classroom
Using sociometry in class help to identify the need for individual students in a classroom-wide intervention and the acquired data can also be used to assess the effects of such interventions. By use of this class, management resource the teacher’s observations to promote a positive learning environment for all students is easy and manageable.
Mapping the Emotional Dynamics of a Classroom
To build a conducive free class environment, ask each pupil to confidentially list two students to work with on an activity. The topic does not really matter. In any case, social relationships will be relatively constant regardless of the activity. Make sure they put their name on the top of the paper as it boosts ownership and confidence.
Understanding the impact of peers
Most teachers and parents will easily agree that peers play an important role in children’s lives. Children interact with their peers regularly, and they are also individuals with whom a child forms friendships even from different age groups. In class, friendship promotes shared activities, both academic and non-academic. Within these friendships in class, children become aware of the broader social status hierarchy that exists within the classroom
Boosting Academic performance
Some researchers have noted that good academic performance has a negative connection with real popularity, but that it significantly increases sociometric popularity. Academic performance is more important for the perceived popularity of girls than it is for boys. For boys, good academic performance may negatively affect their perceived popularity: In his study of children in their early teens, you will easily note that boys often have to hide their interest in good grades it’s clear that a high-achieving student has to use special tactics to balance their popularity and achievement. Therefore, the data on the connection between academic performance and popularity is unclear.
Understanding Gender differences
Boys and girls construct different perfect models for their behavior, understanding this is key. The popular boys easily reveal athletic abilities, coolness, success with the opposite sex, and social skills; while the popular girls may demonstrate the financial well-being of their parents, personal attractiveness, social skills, and academic success. Prosocial behavior is more important for girls than for boys, and, in the process of choosing a friend, girls significantly more often take this into account than do boys.
What are the types of Sociometry?
Research sociometry
Research sociometry is action research with groups exploring the social-emotional network of relationships using specific criteria.it simply means gathering primary data from a natural environment without doing a lab experiment or a survey. This research method is highly suited to an interpretive framework rather than to the scientific method.
It is sometimes referred to as network explorations, research sociometry is highly concerned with relational patterns in rather small groups as compared to larger populations, such as organizations and neighborhoods.
It focuses on answering the questions: Who in this group do you want to sit close to you at work or school? Who in the set do you go to for advice on a work or classroom problem? Who in the group do you see perfect in providing satisfying leadership in the pending project?
The most important fact to take note of in-field research is that it only takes place in the subject’s most natural environment without interfering with the natural habits. Whether it’s in a coffee shop, a village set up, a homeless shelter, a hospital, an airport, or a holiday beach resort.
While field research repeatedly begins in a specific setting, the study’s agenda is to observe specific behaviors in a specific setting. Fieldwork is ideal for observing how people behave and why they behave that way.
.Applied sociometry
Applied sociometrists relate mostly to a variety of methods that assist people and groups, expand, and develop their existing psycho-social networks of relationships and interactions.
This type of research mostly emphasizes working with a hospital or community health center to improve the availability of health services for people with low literacy skills.
It comes in handy when/if designing surveys and collecting data for purposes of tracking public opinion, creating profiles of various populations, or measuring a change in specific social indicators in matters like fertility, cohabitation, poverty, educational attainment, racism, happiness, etc.
Applied sociology aids in studying the social impact of emergency communications during and/or after a crisis so that emergency planners and handlers can improve communications procedures. This makes it easy to work with a community organization to establish an evidence-based program for disadvantaged youth and individuals.
This research method focuses on conducting participatory action research in partnership with a community to find out what kind of economic development would work for that community, understanding and finding a solution to issues occurring in a group and organizational dynamics within an institution.
What are the sociometric techniques?
The normativity stranglehold
Researchers who use sociometric techniques do so for children who mostly lack friends and social networks. The argument is that if such children are identified then the research can be used to help them What this neglects, nevertheless, is the underpinning assumption that a certain number of friends is normal and that children with atypical friendship or social patterns require these to be normalized, often by normalizing the children themselves. This maintains a position that the happiness of young people is completely dependent on the social relations between them and their peers without considering the fluid and contextual nature of social interaction.
Architects of their downfall
Sociometric studies are the backbone of literature in which isolated children are seen as designers of their downfall. The opposite is unavoidably unspoken and individuals who are isolated are identified alongside factors that make them unpopular among others.
Often, this reflects basic medicalized understandings of the children whose ‘isolation’ is highly blamed on their social skills inadequacy. They encourage SNP(social network perspective) which mirrors an understanding of the complex arrangement of both individual and group factors with regards to social relationships. More importantly, in terms of our argument about potential harms, this can reduce the research to a process of categorization
Whose agenda?
Many justify the use of sociometric because they capture the perspectives of children and young people. It’s said that what children experience differs from that which adults’ witness. Similarly, this technique provides an evaluation of the individual social relations from the perspective of the peers themselves, rather than relying on external or adult sources of information. This may be true, but they need to identify children who may be isolates and so on, which is very much an adult job.
The transactional turn
The argument is that we should be less concerned with isolating simple relationships:
Who likes who, who dislikes who, and how this impacts on behavior, and more concerned with the role of sociometric techniques in influencing the on-going interactions within social settings. Behavior change in one person influences attitude and is then fed back-transformed to the other. This process is repeated in dynamic interactions which makes the idea of one-off consequences of our research interventions highly difficult.
The main argument in defense of sociometric is that identifying individuals on the sidelines of social groups allows us to do something about them to get involved in the problem. The sociometric process itself is part of re-defining individuals and their relationship with the social environment.