Behavioral Differences of Sociometric.

The purpose of this study was to investigate certain behavioral differences between those children who were most chosen and those who were most rejected by their peers in a nursery school group. The research was designed to provide quantitative measures of the behavioral and sociometric variables in order that the method might be applicable to other groups for replication and extension of the area of investigation. It has been found by other researchers that young children do have preferences among their peers (4, 5, 9, I1), and both the present study and the Budden study reported by Northway (11) found that these preferences show a high rank order consistency over a period of months. There has been little agreement, however, about the characteristics of children who achieve high or low status in this earliest stable peer group experience. Most of the studies, including those of school age children, have investigated the relationship of sociometric status to background factors, such as propinquity, age, and family data (2, 4, 6), or to personality variables such as intelligence, behavior within the group, and motor abilities (4, 5, 7, 8, 9). The behavior variables have been measured primarily through observation of a group in a nonstandardized setting, with the exception of Moreno (9), who observed interaction between experimental pairs. No reports were found in which individual performance measured in a controlled experimental situation was the dependent variable. In order to meet the need both for method and information the present study was undertaken, utilizing a set of play materials for the experimental medium.