14-09-2013, 03:45 PM
Introduction to Sociometry
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WHAT IS SOCIOMETRY?
The word sociometry comes from the Latin “socius,” meaning social and the Latin “metrum,” meaning measure. As these roots imply, sociometry is a way of measuring the degree of relatedness among people. Measurement of relatedness can be useful not only in the assessment of behavior within groups, but also for interventions to bring about positive change and for determining the extent of change. For a work group, sociometry can be a powerful tool for reducing conflict and improving communication because it allows the group to see itself objectively and to analyze its own dynamics. It is also a powerful tool for assessing dynamics and development in groups devoted to therapy or training.
Jacob Levy Moreno coined the term sociometry and conducted the first long-range sociometric study from 1932-38 at the New York State Training School for Girls in Hudson, New York. As part of this study, Moreno used sociometric techniques to assign residents to various residential cottages. He found that assignments on the basis of sociometry substantially reduced the number of runaways from the facility.
SOCIOMETRIC CRITERIA
Choices are always made on some basis or criterion. The criterion may be subjective, such as an intuitive feeling of liking or disliking a person on first impression. The criterion may be more objective and conscious, such as knowing that a person does or does not have certain skills needed for the group task.
When members of a group are asked to choose others in the group based on a specific criteria, everyone in the group can make choices and describe why the choices were made. From these choices a description emerges of the networks inside the group. A drawing, like a map, of those networks is called a sociogram. The data for the sociogram may also be displayed as a table or matrix of each person’s choices. Such a table is called a sociomatrix.
A SIMPLE EXAMPLE
A simple example of applied sociometry is to have group members make a selection on the basis of a simple, non-threatening criterion. Ask everyone in the group to stand up and then say: “Whom in this group would you choose to take sandwich orders from everyone in this room, go to the store, and come back with the right sandwiches and the right change? Show your choice by placing your right hand on the shoulder of the person you choose. Move about the room as you need to in order to make your choice. There are only two requirements: (1) you may choose only one person and (2) you must choose someone.” Typically the group members will make their choices after only a little hesitation.
This exercise may be repeated several times in the period of just a few minutes using different criteria each time. The exercise graphically illustrates not only the social reality of choice-making, but also the fact that different criteria evoke different patterns of choices. The sandwich money criterion would probably identify someone who is good with details. An intuitive, big picture, future-oriented person would be likely to be identified by this criterion: “If you had to project a new cultural phenomenon, unheard of at this point in time, whom in this room would you ask for information?”
A MORE COMPLEX EXAMPLE
Suppose we want to know how much interpersonal trust exists within a small group of six members. Let's call the group members Ann, Bob, Claire, Don, Edna, and Fred. For the purposes of this example, we will use the following criterion: “I trust this person to keep oral agreements and commitments, and not to undercut me or go behind my back.” We will use the symbols “+” to indicate “High Trust”, “O” to indicate “Moderate Trust”, and “-” to indicate “Distrust/Conflict”.
Next we interview each group member individually. When we have established rapport, and have explained that all responses will be kept confidential, we ask the person we are interviewing to rate every other person in the group, based on the criterion.
CRITERION SELECTION
The selection of the appropriate criterion makes or breaks the sociometric intervention. As in all data-collection in the social sciences, the answers you get depend on the questions you ask. Any question will elicit information but unless the right question is asked, the information may be confusing or distracting or irrelevant to the intervention’s objective.
A good criterion should present a meaningful choice to the person in as simple a format as possible. For example: “Whom would you most like to have as part of this [specified type of] work team [e.g.: auditing] to [work in this specified way] [e.g.: to audit remote sites]?”.
The criterion must be like a surgeon’s knife: most effective when it cleanly isolates the material of interest. In responding to the question, each person will choose based on an individual interpretation of the criterion. These interpretations, or sub-criteria, for this particular question could include: do I want a person who works hard, who is a power-broker, who is amiable, a minority, etc. A clear statement of the criterion will tend to reduce the number of interpretations and will therefore increase the reliability of the data.
VALIDITY
Does sociometry really measure something useful? Jane Mouton, Robert Blake and Benjamin Fruchter reviewed the early applications of sociometry and concluded that the number of sociometric choices do tend to predict such performance criteria as productivity, combat effectiveness, training ability, and leadership. An inverse relationship also holds: the number of sociometric choices received are negatively correlated with undesirable aspects of behavior such as accident-proneness, sick bay attendance and frequency of disciplinary charges” (Mouton, Blake, and Fruchter in Moreno, 1960, pp. 362 - 387). The more frequently you are chosen, the less likely you are to exhibit the undesirable behavior.