The study of preschool children's peer relations has primarily employed sociometric interviews and observations of children's social participation during free-play situations as methods of assessment. These assessments of peer relations have traditionally demonstrated lack of fit between attitude (as measured by sociometry) and behavior (observation of social participation). Often, sociometric peer preference and acceptance does not correspond to children's observation of social participation during freeplay. The present study was designed to improve this attitude-behavior fit by developing the Crystallized Sociometric Scales which employed post stratification of opinion responses. Subjects consisted of 65 preschool children between three- to five- years- of age, divided into two preschool groups of 45 and 20 subjects. Interviews on both the traditional sociometric scales and the crystallized sociometric (weighted with questions on peer exclusivity and friendship concept) were obtained. Observation of social participation used Parten's category of play with interval time sampling. Sociometric analyses of data provided a child by child picture of the social structure of the peer group. The discrepancy scores between social participation and the traditional and crystallized sociometric variables were compared using t-tests. Results indicated that peer exclusivity provided the best attitude-behavior fit and was significantly better than the traditional nomination score. The level of the friendship concept did not affect the social participation of children. Crystallized ratings were not significantly different from the traditional ratings. The stability of the Crystallized Sociometric Scales was moderate, although it was significantly better than the traditional sociometric scales. It was concluded that crystallized sociometric nominations provide a methodology to improve the attitude-behavior fit. Although correlated, sociometry and social participation measure different aspects of peer relations whose relationship can be influenced by measurement procedures. / Graduation date: 1992

The quality of children's daily experiences in preschool classrooms is predictive of their school readiness and later achievement (Duncan et al., 2007; La Paro & Pianta, 2000). One particularly important aspect of these experiences is the quality of emotional support provided by teachers and peers in the classroom (Hamre & Pianta, 2005; Howes et al., 2008; Mashburn, 2008; National Center on Quality Teaching and Learning, 2012). Traditionally, emotional support quality has been calculated as the average of ratings taken across the school year and is meant to represent children's average daily experience, without regard to any variability which exists within the ratings over time. The bioecological model of development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998; 2006) points out the necessity of considering in what ways learning experiences occur over time when drawing links between children's daily lives and later outcomes. In addition, attachment theory (Bowlby, 1973; Ainsworth, 1979) highlights the foundational nature of caregivers' consistency of emotional responses over time in helping young children develop skills and competencies. This study continues a line of research focused on investigating the stability of high-quality interactions as a possible mechanism through which children's optimal cognitive and social-emotional development occurs in preschool classrooms (Curby, Brock, & Hamre, 2013; Curby et al., 2011; Zinsser, Bailey, Curby, Denham, & Bassett, 2013). The current study examined the role of children's socioeconomic and behavioral risk factors, teachers' mean emotional support, and teachers' emotional support consistency in predicting children's cognitive and social-emotional development in preschool. Children's socioeconomic and behavioral risk factors (socioeconomic status, gender, age, race, ethnicity, English Language Learner status, and self-regulation) negatively predicted both baseline scores and development over the course of the year on the cognitive measures (early math and language and literacy). Low levels of teacher-rated student self-regulation at the beginning of the year significantly negatively predicted baseline scores and development on all academic and social-emotional measures. Contrary to most previous research, teachers' mean emotional support was not found to be a significant contributor to children's development when considered with child risk factors, except in the case of receptive vocabulary. The consistency of teachers' emotional support, however, was predictive of several measures of children's development of academic skills when controlling for child risk factors. A significant interaction between English Language Learner status and emotional support consistency was found in predicting development of expressive vocabulary skills. Multilevel models combining child characteristics, mean emotional support, and emotional support consistency suggest that child risk factors and emotional support consistency predict language and literacy development, above and beyond mean emotional support. Follow-up analyses also suggest that, under conditions of relatively high emotional support, consistency is especially important in predicting children's development of cognitive and social-emotional skills.