Assessment of adolescents' preference- and reputation-based peer status using sociometric experts

This study examined the correspondence between sociometric measures of peer status based on nominations completed by a full sample of adolescents, a subsample of teacher-nominated socionnetric '' experts,'' and a randomly selected subsample of adolescents. Both preference-based sociometric peer status and reputation-based peer-perceived peer status were measured for 232 tenth-grade adolescents. Results suggested that measures of preference-based peer status based on nominations by sociometric experts were moderately to strongly associated with results using traditional procedures; correspondence for measures of reputation-based peer status was significantly greater. Test-retest reliability of experts' nominations was moderate to high as well. Correspondence between experts' nominations and nominations completed by the full sample was not significantly greater than correspondence using the randomly selected subsample, however, suggesting that there may be several reliable and valid options for collecting sociometric data on peer status in adolescence using a subset of the full sample.