Sociometric Assessment

Sociometric assessments have a long history that dates back to the 1934 work Who shall survive? by Jacob Moreno. In his book, Moreno introduced sociometric assessment as a method to measure attraction and repulsion between individuals and to study individuals’ functioning within groups. Although sociometric assessments were initially used among adult prison inmates and in psychiatric hospitals, the method was quickly used in other social settings as well. Currently, sociometric methods are most commonly used to measure children’s social position at school but are also used in other group structures such as sports teams or professional work environments.

The underlying assumption of the method is that each group member is an expert observer of daily interactions in the group and can therefore evaluate the group and ...