Saturday, February 04, 2006

Qualitative Research Design: Sociometry

Sociometry: Sociometry word originates from two Latin roots ‘socious’ and ‘metrum’, which signifies social measurement. Thus it is defined as the process of measurement of social distance between group members. It gained prominence through works of social psychologist J.L. Moreno in 1934, who propounded the graphical depiction of the structure of group relations called a sociogram.
The process of sociogram starts by listing respondent’s likes and dislikes. Based on like and dislikes, researcher can calculates the mean ratings to identify the social structure that exists. Researcher can complement the process by obtaining field notes through fieldwork, or ethnography. Researcher can combine the result of field notes and the sociometric testing, to draw a sociogram, which links various data attributes through arrows. The arrow in the sociogram signifies a number, which is obtained by dividing an individual's column score by n-1. Along with sociogram, a summary table is also constructed to show the frequency distributions.