Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Personality and ...

chapter 9 Peer-Referenced Assessment217rate other students. These students werechosen by their teachers as “social experts.”The correlations between nominationsobtained in the full classroom and thosecompleted by experts were generally quitehigh (r’s ranging from .55 to 93). Similarcorrelations were found between the fullclassroom procedure and the nominationscompleted by a random subsample(r’s ranging from .49 to 90). Thus, theseresults suggest that there may be someless cost intensive alternatives to obtainingpeer nominations, at least in classroomswith adolescent students.The typical level of interpretation of apeer nomination procedure is the numberof times a child was nominated in a givencategory. This number is then comparedto a normative base for that particularprocedure to see if the child was nominatedat a level that is atypical for childrenhis or her age. However, there are someinstances where more complex combinationsor adjustments of peer nominationsare desired. For some purposes it may beuseful to compare the number of nominationsobtained by a child in one area withthe number of nominations that the samechild received in another area. For example,in sociometric techniques, one oftencompares the number of times a child wasnominated as Liked Least with the numberof times he or she was nominated as LikedMost by classmates. This allows one todetermine the relative balance of two nominationcategories. However, to make suchcomparisons, the two scores should first beconverted to standard scores (e.g., Z-scores;Coie et al., 1982) to equate for possible differencesin the variance of the raw scores.A second type of conversion is warrantedif one wishes to compare nominationsof one child with the nominations ofanother child from another nominatingpool (e.g., different class). To make thiscomparison the number of nominationsmust be adjusted to equate scores for differingclass sizes. For example, 5 nominationsof Most Cooperative in a class of 12 shouldbe interpreted differently than 5 nominationsin a class of 30. As an example of thisconversion, Strauss et al. (1988) dividedthe number of nominations obtained by achild by the number of children participatingin the assessment. The quotient wasmultiplied by 23, so that the nominationswere all expressed in terms of a commonclass size of 23.SociometricsSociometric techniques focus on a specific,important aspect of a child’s peer relationships:a child’s social status. It answers thequestion of whether or not a child is likedand accepted by his or her peer group.Sociometrics do not assess specific behaviorsof the child. It answers the questionof whether the child is liked and not whatis the child like or why the child is liked(Asher & Hymel, 1981). Sociometric exerciseshave appeared in the research literaturesince the 1930s (see Gresham & Little,1993; Hughes, 1990), and the most commonlyused procedure has changed verylittle over this time. An example of thisbasic technique from Strauss et al. (1988)is provided in Box 9.2.Sociometric exercises can take the formof peer ratings, whereby peers rate a childon a Likert scale as to how well liked or dislikedhe or she is (Hamilton, Fuchs, Fuchs,& Roberts, 2000). However, the more commonmethod of obtaining sociometrics isthrough peer nominations. In this technique,children can be nominated by peersas a child who is Liked Most (sometimesdefined as Most like to have as a best friendor Most like to play with) and/or they can benominated by peers as a child who is LikedLeast (or alternatively, Least like to have as afriend or Least like to play with). Althoughthere is no definitive normative study thatspecifies exact cut-offs for when nominationsare considered indicative of problems,