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
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/36255 |
| Date | 27 September 1991 |
| Creators | Shankar, Ila |
| Contributors | Andrews, David W. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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