What is a Sociogram and what can be made from the data?

Published in Visuals

Sociograms

By Oliver Caviglioli  •  19.06.15

Do you remember sociograms? Well, I guess only if you taught as far back as the 1970s when they were quite popular. According to expert Roger Banerjee, they help teachers understand more about their class’s peer relationships.

What are sociograms?

By asking students questions about who they most like or dislike, you can plot these relationships visually. The resulting map of connections represents the underlying social dynamics of your classroom. Is this useful? Well, seeing the links displayed in front of you might give you some insights that would normally be hidden in the busy life of a class. The bigger question, it seems to me, is how to respond to students’ natural interests in what you did with all their questionnaires. Would it be harmful to show them their sociogram? Hmm, that’s a difficult one.

Creating a sociogram

So how are sociograms made? Roger Banerjee explains:

” Sociograms are made on the basis of pupils’ nominations of classmates in response to questions. The exact wording of the questions can vary depending on the interests of the teacher. But a common scenario involves asking pupils to nominate three classmates with whom they most like to play or spend time with, and three classmates with whom they least like to play or spend free time with.”

A sociogram I copied from Banerjee's website.