Children’s Peer Status in School Settings

Abstract

Peer nomination and peer rating procedures are reviewed with regard to their relevance to assessing children’s social acceptance and social status in school settings. Social acceptance is the child’s actual liking by other children, whereas social status is the child’s comparative social standing or friendship with classmates. Peer nomination sociometric techniques are more appropriate for measuring social acceptance in children, whereas peer nomination techniques are more suited to assessing children’s social status. The strengths, limitations and potential applications of peer nomination and peer rating sociometric methods are discussed. A new method of capitalizing on the relative strengths of both peer rating and peer nomination procedures is presented.