Every class group has a relational structure that no seating plan records: who is nominated, who is avoided, who is never named at all. Sociometry makes that structure explicit and measurable. In a session of some fifteen minutes the students respond to 25 items, and the platform returns eight sociograms, the group indexes and an individual report for each student.
A sociogram represents the relational structure of a class group from the only vantage point with direct access to it: the students themselves. Each of them responds confidentially, on their own screen, indicating whom they would choose for a task, a game or a trip, whom they would rather not work with and — the dimension most often omitted — whom they BELIEVE has nominated them and whom they believe has rejected them.
From those responses the platform reconstructs the sociometric matrix of the group: who occupies a central position, who remains on the periphery, which bonds are reciprocal and which unilateral, and how accurately each student perceives the position the group assigns them.
It is not a personality test and it yields no diagnosis. It measures the RELATIONS of a group at a given moment, and those relations change: an application in October and another in April describe two different situations, and the difference between them is usually the most informative datum of the school year.
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The sociogram is a standardised test of the system: the items are already drafted, piloted and translated, so no item has to be written. From your account the procedure comprises four steps.
The School sociogram is listed in the catalogue of system tests: 25 items — five positive nominations, five negative nominations, five items of perceived positive nomination and five of perceived negative nomination — plus the instruction screens. Copying it into your account produces your own version, ready to be assigned. Each administration is an independent copy, so the instrument can be applied again later in the school year without overwriting the previous measurement.
Assign the test to one of your class groups. The platform issues an access code and freezes the class list the moment the first student begins, so that every nomination refers to the same roster.
Students require no account, no email address and no password. They open the home page, enter the access code, select their name from the class list and respond. Administration takes 10 to 15 minutes and responses are confidential: no student has access to the nominations of another.
Once the group has finished, the platform computes the whole analysis: the eight sociograms, the group indexes and an individual report for each student. Large groups are processed in the background, so the page can be closed and reopened when the computation is complete.
Applying the same instrument again a few months later turns a description into a measurement of change: the group evolves, and so does its relational structure.
When you create the application you choose the CRITERION: the context in which each student chooses or rejects their classmates. The questions the students answer and the report adapt to the criterion you pick.
A single diagram containing every arrow is unreadable. The relational network is therefore represented eight times, and each representation answers a different question about the group.
The strongest bonds: the classmates each student names FIRST. This is the representation in which the informal leadership of the group becomes visible, and it does not always coincide with the most conspicuous student in the classroom.
The wider circle of affinity: bonds that exist without being anyone's first nomination. They act as bridges between subgroups and prevent the class from fragmenting into closed cliques.
The clearest tensions in the group. These arrows account for a large share of the incidents recorded in the playground and are the first thing to examine when the coexistence of a group deteriorates.
Milder rejections. Taken singly each one is of little significance; accumulated on the same student they indicate a progressive process of exclusion.
Reciprocal bonds: A nominates B and B nominates A. These dyads constitute the relational backbone of the group and are the basis on which to reorganise teams.
Two students who reject each other. Such dyads are usually few in number and account for a disproportionate share of the conflicts recorded in the classroom.
The two previous representations on a single diagram: reciprocal nominations in blue and reciprocal rejections in red. It summarises the relational balance of the group — where bonds hold and where they break — and is the quickest way to establish whether positive reciprocity outweighs negative reciprocity.
One student nominates another who, in turn, rejects them. Each line carries a blue arrowhead towards the student who is nominated and a red one towards the student who is rejected: the same dyad read in opposite directions by its two members. It is the most vulnerable position in the group and the hardest to detect through classroom observation, because nothing in the behaviour reveals it: the student remains next to a classmate who does not want them there. Only the strongest oppositions are represented — first and second nominations on both sides.
The eight sociograms are drawn with a Fruchterman-Reingold layout and a Northway projection: the most nominated students are placed at the centre of the diagram and the isolated ones on the outer ring, so that the position of a node is already an indicator before any figure is read. Node colour encodes the sex of the student, which makes same-sex subgroups visible at a glance, and every arrow runs from the student who nominates to the student who is nominated.
Before examining any individual case, the report characterises the group as a unit.
The report tabulates every student with their sociometric indicators side by side — nominations and rejections received and issued, perceptions, oppositions and reciprocities — and flags the cases that the statistical analysis singles out: popular, rejected, controversial or ignored.
It is the screening layer of the instrument: it establishes where to look. Each row opens the individual report of that student.
For each student the platform computes some twenty indicators, organised in five blocks that answer five different questions:
The same indicators represented as a map. The student occupies the centre and each classmate is placed on one of four concentric rings according to the affinity between the two: the innermost ring contains the strongest bonds and the outer ring those classmates from whom there is a measurable social distance.
Comparing the map of a popular student with that of a rejected one makes the difference explicit: in the first the group occupies the inner rings, in the second the outer one. Classmates with no measurable relation in either direction are omitted, so that the representation remains legible.
Popularity is not established by an absolute count of nominations: six nominations in a group of thirty are not equivalent to six in a group of twelve. Each student is compared with the value EXPECTED in a group of that size with that number of nominations, and the indicator is marked only when the difference reaches statistical significance at the 95 % confidence level.
The status diagram represents the eight basic indicators as eight octants: blue for a significantly high value, red for a significantly low one and white when the student falls within the expected range. The heading of the diagram states the resulting profile.
Four profiles are derived from those significance thresholds. They are not labels attached to a child: they describe the position the group assigns to that student, and such a position is modifiable.
Receives significantly more nominations than expected and no unusual number of rejections. Their social distance map shows the group in the inner rings. It is the profile that teachers identify without needing any instrument.
Receives significantly more rejections than expected. The group holds an explicit opinion about this student, and it is a negative one. It is a visible position, it produces incidents and it therefore tends to receive attention.
Receives neither nominations nor rejections: significantly few of both. No classmate names this student in any direction. They cause no incidents, they raise no complaints and they can go through an entire school year unnoticed. This is the profile that justifies administering the instrument: a rejected student reaches the tutor, an ignored one does not.
Receives significantly many nominations AND significantly many rejections at the same time. The group is divided about this student: they have a support network and they have conflicts. It is not an intermediate position between popular and rejected but a profile in its own right.
Most of the group will show no profile at all, which is the expected outcome: those students fall within the statistically expected range. The absence of a label is itself a result.
A sociogram constitutes, by definition, sensitive data about minors: who is rejected and by whom. Students therefore respond with no account, no email address and no password; surnames are stored and displayed as initials only; personal data are encrypted field by field; and closing an account effectively deletes them.
The sociograms and reports on this page come from a FICTITIOUS group, generated specifically to illustrate them. No real student has ever appeared on a public page of this site, and none ever will.
The instrument is available in the catalogue of system tests: copy it into your account, assign it to a class group and read the report. The user manual documents the whole procedure screen by screen.
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