Limited Nomination Reliability Using Single- and Multiple-item Measures

This article examines a variety of reliability issues as related to limited nomination sociometric measures. Peer nomination data were collected from 77 sixth grade classrooms. Results showed that, although some single‐item peer nomination measures were relatively reliable, many single‐item peer nom...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social development (Oxford, England) England), 2014-08, Vol.23 (3), p.518-536
Main Authors: Babcock, Ben, Marks, Peter E. L., Crick, Nicki R., Cillessen, Antonius H. N.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aggression
Child psychology
Classrooms
Nominations
peer nominations
Peer relationships
prosocial behavior
Reliability
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This article examines a variety of reliability issues as related to limited nomination sociometric measures. Peer nomination data were collected from 77 sixth grade classrooms. Results showed that, although some single‐item peer nomination measures were relatively reliable, many single‐item peer nomination measures using limited nominations were quite unreliable. Overt aggression nomination items were the only set of single‐item measures where mean classroom reliability estimates were .75 or greater. Combining multiple items led to substantially better reliability, as combining the two least reliable items for a category into a single measure made the composite more reliable than the most reliable single measure. Having more nominators in the sample also increased reliability. The limited nomination items overall tended to be less reliable than similar unlimited nomination items from other studies. The authors end with recommendations for obtaining the most reliable peer nomination data possible from a study.
ISSN:0961-205X
1467-9507
DOI:10.1111/sode.12056