Sociometric Awareness, Social Participation, and Perceived Popularity in Preschool Children Author(s): Murray Krantz Reviewed work(s): Source:

Child Development, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Apr., 1982), pp. 376-379 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1128979 . Accessed: 03/06/2012 18:05
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Sociometric Awareness, Social Participation, and Perceived Popularity in Preschool Children

Murray Krantz
Florida State University Participation, and Perceived Popularity in Preschool Children. CHILDDEVELOPMENT, 1982, 53, 376-379. This study focused on the relationships between social status, social interaction,and knowledge of social relationshipsin preschool children. 47 middle-classpreschoolerswere assessed on a sociometrictest of popularity, an observationalmeasure of social participation,a measure of referential communication,and an emotion-attribution task. An additional sociometric procedure was designed to assess the children's ability to accurately portray the sociometry of their same-sexed peer group (sociometricawareness) and to generate a measureof perceivedpopularity.Statisticalanalysisrevealed a pattern of covariationamong the measuresof social participation,sociometric awareness,and perceived popularity. Children who were relatively high in social participation were more aware of the friendship pattern of their peers and were perceived as more popular by their peers. Conventionalmeasures of referential communicationand emotion attribution were not related to social involvementin this age group. The fact that some young children are knowledge in the preschool child and the study more sociometrically popular than others sugof the relationships between such knowledge and social behavior would seem worthwhile. In gests that the more popular children may be the present study, two forms of early social functioning in some manner which results in the elicitation of positive preference for their knowledge, one measure of communicative abilpartnership in play. The existing literature, ity, and a measure of social participation were however, has only begun to identify the parrelated to the achievement of popularity. The ticular patterns of social behavior, skill, and two forms of social knowledge were the Intercognitive ability which are associated with the personal Awareness Test (Borke 1971) and an assessment of sociometric awareness, that is, development of social status in peer groups of the child's knowledge of the existing friendship young children (Asher, Oden, & Gottman 1977). Clearly, the ability of young children ties among his peers. Communicative ability to enter into relatively enduring and exclusive was assessed by a modified version of the referential communication task (Glucksberg, Krauss, play partnerships suggests the mediation of social cognitive process. Previous studies, how& Weisberg 1966), and social participation was ever, of the relationships between measures of directly observed using Parten's (1932) scale. social perspective taking and social status have The rationale for the expected covariation not been very encouraging. In general, neither among these variables assumed that relatively Rubin (1973) nor Gottman, Gonso, and Rashigh levels of social status are achieved by mussen (1975) showed strong support for the children who are: (1) knowledgeable with rebetween conventional measures of relationships spect to the situational appropriateness of simperspective taking and popularity in elemenple emotions; (2) aware of the prior network tary school children. of significant relationships among their peers; Despite the fact that perspective taking (3) capable of adapting their communications in the strict Piagetian sense may elude very to the perspectives of their peers; and (4) active social participants in the activities of the young children (Shantz 1975), there remains the distinct possibility that the emerging body peer group. An important conceptual distincof social knowledge in the preschool years may tion applied in this study was the difference affect social interaction among peers. The idenbetween popularity and "perceived" popularity. tification, therefore, of specific forms of social Popularity was the result of the summation of I wish to thank David Andrews, Betsy Lucas, and Rebecca Tadtman for their able assistance in data collection. Requestsfor reprintsmay be addressedto the authorat the Department of Home and Family Life, Florida State University,Tallahassee,Florida 32306.
[Child Development, 1982, 53, 376-379. @ 1982 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved. 0009-3920/82/5302-0010$01.00J

Sociometric Awareness, Social KRAN-Z, MURRAY.

Murray Krantz
positive friendship nominations for each child as derived from a standard sociometric test. For perceived popularity, each child was asked to designate the best friends of each member of the peer group, and all such preference judgments were summed as an index of social status. Thus, perceived popularity reflected the degree to which children were "thought of" as most popular. The pattern of covariation of the two popularity measures with the remaining variables was of special interest. All testing was conducted on an individual basis by three graduate students during a 5week period. The sequence of test/observation administration was approximately the order presented below with some overlap and occasional delays due to absence. Referential communication.-Previous attempts to demonstrate a relationship between social status and referential communication with preschool children produced conflicting findings (Deutsch 1974; Rubin 1972, 1973). Some of the difficulty may have resulted from the use of abstract drawings as referents. In an effort to increase the generation of distinctive features, yet avoid the simplicity of easily identifiable pictures, a set of nine low-encodable, real objects were assembled for presentation to the preschool sample. The objects included a table-leg bracket, a window crank, a vacuum cleaner drive belt, and other unusual objects which could be easily held and explored for distinctive features. The objects were pretested on five children, and no consistency was found in the use of particular names for any of the objects. In all other respects, the administration of the task was identical to Glucksberg et al. (1966). All communications were transcribed, and distinctive features were coded after Rubin (1973, p. 105). The mean number of distinctive features per communication generated in the revised procedure was 2.3 compared to Rubin's (1973) report of .99 for kindergarten children. This finding would support the expected advantage provided by the use of lowencodable objects with young children. Emotion attribution. - The Interpersonal Awareness Test (Borke 1971) was administered to assess the children's ability to infer the situational appropriateness of feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. The test consists of 23 brief stories and pictures that depict social situations which would be expected to elicit specific emotional responses. Due to the fact that the test items appear to tap only the

377

child's ability to attribute appropriate emotional response, the term "emotion attribution" was used in this report rather than the term "empathy." Social participation.-The social interaction of each same-sex group of children was independently observed in 10-min free-play sessions over a 10-day period using Parten's (1932) scale of social participation. Thirty, 15sec time samples were collected for each child in a predetermined random order over the 10day period. Each observation received a single code of the highest degree of social participation achieved during the interval. The children were only observed when all members of the same-sex group were present and minimal supervision was maintained throughout the freeplay sessions. Interobserver reliability was assessed for two, 10-min observations at the beginning and midpoint of data collection. The percentage of agreement for the observers ranged from 90%-95%. Popularity.-A standard sociometric preference test was administered to each child with positive preferences used in the calculation of the popularity index. The test-retest reliability of the popularity scores at two testings, one week apart was .93. Sociometric awareness.-The second part of the sociometric interview required each child to indicate the positive friendship preferences of each of his or her same-sex peers. One picture at a time was removed from the display and the child was asked to identify the peer in the picture and instructed: "Point to the picture of the child that (name of the child in the picture) likes to play with the most." The selected picture was then turned face down on the table and a second choice was elicited. The two pictures were then returned to the display and a second peer's picture was removed. The procedure was repeated until the child had identified two positive preferences from the perspective of each of his peers with respect to each other. The sociometric awareness score was derived by comparing each child's judgments of the preferences of a peer with the actual stated preferences of that peer as assessed in the first part of the sociometric interview. The child received 1 point for each judgment on the second part which could be confirmed for accuracy in the first part, summed across all children in the group. The test-retest reliability of this measure, assessed by retesting one group of girls after 10 days, was .69.

378

Child Development Perceived popularity.-This measure was

measure and perceived popularity were highly correlated, the two measures showed different patterns of covariation with the remaining variables. In particular, conventional popularity showed no relationship to sociometric awareness. The face validity of the pattern of covariation among social participation, sociometric awareness, and perceived popularity is compelling. The child who is deeply involved as a participant in the activities of the peer group would be in an advantageous position to gather information with respect to each peer's preferences for play partnership (i.e., sociometric awareness). This active participation would also be highly salient to the members of the group and might be perceived by the peers as an indication of individual popularity (i.e., perceived popularity). Although the logic is clear and the correlations significant, the relatively small amount of common variance must certainly be noted. The fact that such relationships were at all discernible in a preschool sample should be encouraging to those researchers who strive to credit young children with considerable social competence. Despite the potential adaptive value inherent in referential communication and emotion-attribution abilities, neither variable related to measures of social status or social participation. The significant partial correlation (r = .38), however, between sociometric awareness and emotion attribution should receive further attention. Both variables tap the emerging social knowledge base of the young child, and their covariation may imply some integration of development in this area. The present data can be interpreted as evidence for the validity of the sociometric awareness construct. The explanatory value of this construct may be due to the fact that it describes the child's awareness of the immediate reality of the peer group to which the

an assessment of social status based on the combined nominations by all members of the peer group with respect to one another. The score for each child was the sum of all positive preference nominations received on the sociometric awareness test. No distinction was made between the first- and second-choice nominations in determination of the perceived popularity score. The test-retest reliability was calculated from the same data used to ascertain reliability for sociometric awareness. The correlation was .90. An examination of children's choices indicated that egocentric responses (i.e., self-selections) had little effect on the perceived-popularity distribution. The data for the six same-sex groups were pooled for correlational analysis. The unequal size of the groups required that the measures of popularity, perceived popularity, and sociometric awareness be converted to percentages. Preliminary comparisons indicated the absence of sex differences on emotion attribution, referential communication, and sociometric awareness, thus supporting the rationale for pooling. The seven variables (including CA) were submitted to a Pearson product-moment correlational analysis, and the results are presented in the lower triangular matrix of table 1. Due to the age-related nature of four of the variables, partial correlations (controlling for CA) were calculated and presented in the upper triangular matrix of table 1. Sociometric awareness, social participation, and perceived popularity were all significantly related to each other, and these relationships were not affected by CA. This cluster of covariation suggests that the child who was more socially involved in the activities of the peer group tended to be perceived as more popular and tended to develop greater awareness of the friendship preferences of his peers for one another. Although the conventional popularity

TABLE 1
ZERO-ORDER AND PARTIAL CORRELATIONS (CONTROLLING FOR

CA)

CA Emotionattribution..... Referential .42

.37 communication

EA
.35

RC .23
- .08 .06

SA
- .22

SP - .10
- .20

PP
- .07

P
- .07

.38

.11 .37

.20 .24 .65

.13

Popularity ..............
NoTE.-Partial

Socialparticipation ....... Perceived popularity.....

Sociometric awareness.....

.23 .04
.33

.28

.00 .12
.31

.07

- .09 - .04

.47 .34
.21

.44

.34 .62

.37
.29

correlations are in the upper triangular matrix. Critical r value for p < .01 = .33.

Murray Krantz
child is trying to adapt. Sociometric awareness provides information which is of immediate practical value in support of this adaptation. The continued search for measures of social knowledge and skill which are of practical utility in the child's quest for social status should be of high priority in future research.

379

References
Asher, S. R.; Oden, S. L.; & Gottman,J. M. Children's friendships in school settings. In L. G. Katz (Ed.), Currenttopics in early childhood education.Vol. 1. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1977. Borke, H. Interpersonalperception of young children: egocentrismor empathy?Developmental Psychology, 1971, 5, 263-269. and Deutsch, F. Observational sociometricmeasures of peer popularity and their relationship to egocentric communication in female preschoolers. Developmental Psychology, 1974, 10, 745-747.

Glucksberg, S.; Krauss, R. M.; & Weisberg, R. Referential communication in nursery school children: method and some preliminaryfindings. Journal of ExperimentalChild Psychology, 1966, 3, 333-342. Gottman, J.; Gonso, J.; & Rasmussen,B. Social interaction, social competence, and friendship in children. Child Development, 1975, 46, 709-718. Parten, M. B. Social participationamong preschool children. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1932, 27, 243-269. Rubin, K. H. Relationshipbetween egocentriccommunication and popularity among peers. DevelopmentalPsychology, 1972, 7, 364. Rubin, K. H. Egocentrismin childhood: a unitary construct?Child Development, 1973, 44, 102110. Shantz, C. U. The developmentof social cognition. In E. M. Hetherington(Ed.), Review of child development research. Vol. 5. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.