Sociometric Popularity in a School Context

Abstract

This study investigates how the sociometric popularity of schoolchildren is related to individual academic achievements in a context of different levels of academic culture and educational aspirations in the classroom. The sample includes 5058 students in 270 classes from 98 schools in St. Petersburg. To examine class-level effects, we employ multi-level hierarchical models using HLM 7 software. Different effects for boys and girls were found, indicating that the relationship between academic performance and popularity is gender-specific. The results demonstrate that in classes with a low learning motivation individual academic achievements of boys are negatively related to their popularity, while in classes with a high academic culture the relationship is positive.

Analysis of adolescents social competence: A Ghanaian perspective

“…Sociometry as a technique that is employed to know popularity of a person or who other people or group members would prefer to play, study or work with was used to get peers who could competently rate the sampled students' social competence. This technique was employed to select the peers because as Titkova et al (2013) assert, sociometry brings out a student's locus in the structure of friendship network and mirrors the like and dislike that group members for the student. Form masters were also chosen to rate the social competence of the students because in the basic schools in Ghana, these staff are mandated to report on students' conduct and academic performance in their terminal reports at the end of every academic term.…”

Do Popular Students have Outstanding Academic Achievement and Academic Attitude?

“…Nevertheless, inconsistent results were shown in different cultures 'school contexts (Titkova, Ivaniushina & Alexandrov, 2013). Studies in Chinese secondary school implied that Academic achievement would be positively associated with popularity as well as social preference in Chinese adolescence (Niu, Jin, Li&French, 2016).…”

“…Thus, the result of the relation between popularity and academic achievement and attitude may vary from the prior studies that set in western secondary schools. (Titkova, Ivaniushina & Alexandrov, 2013) In the following sections, a review of the literature of popularity and academic achievement will be presented. Following the prior literature, a theoretical framework, rationale of the study, and research method and design of the study will be presented.…”