Sociogram
Encyclopedia
Social
The term social refers to a characteristic of living organisms...
links that a person has. It is a graph drawing
Graph drawing
Graph drawing is an area of mathematics and computer science combining methods from geometric graph theory and information visualization to derive two-dimensional depictions of graphs arising from applications such as social network analysis, cartography, and bioinformatics...
that plots the structure of interpersonal relations in a group situation.
Overview
Sociograms were developed by Jacob L. MorenoJacob L. Moreno
Jacob Levy Moreno was a Jewish Romanian-born Austrian-American leading psychiatrist and psychosociologist, thinker and educator, the founder of psychodrama, and the foremost pioneer of group psychotherapy...
to analyze choices or preferences within a group. They can diagram the structure and patterns of group interactions. A sociogram can be drawn on the basis of many different criteria: Social relations, channels of influence, lines of communication etc.
Those points on a sociogram who have many choices are called Stars. Those with few or no choices are called isolates. Individuals who choose each other are known to have made a Mutual Choice. One-Way Choice refers to individuals who choose someone but the choice is not reciprocated. Cliques are groups of three or more people within a larger group who all choose each other (Mutual Choice).
Sociograms are the charts or tools used to find the Sociometry
Sociometry
Sociometry is a quantitative method for measuring social relationships. It was developed by psychotherapist Jacob L. Moreno in his studies of the relationship between social structures and psychological well-being....
of a social space.
Under the Social Discipline Model, sociograms are sometimes used to reduce misbehavior in a classroom environment. A sociogram is constructed after students answer a series of questions probing for affiliations with other classmates. The diagram can then be used to identify pathways for social acceptance for misbehaving students. In this context, the resulting sociograms are known as a friendship chart. Often, the most important person/thing is in a bigger bubble to everyone else. The size of the bubble represents the importance, with the biggest bubble meaning most important and the smallest representing the least important.
See also
- Social network analysis softwareSocial network analysis softwareSocial network analysis software facilitates quantitative or qualitative analysis of social networks, by describing features of a network, either through numerical or visual representation...
- Corporate interlocks
- DiagramDiagramA diagram is a two-dimensional geometric symbolic representation of information according to some visualization technique. Sometimes, the technique uses a three-dimensional visualization which is then projected onto the two-dimensional surface...
- Network scienceNetwork scienceNetwork science is a new and emerging scientific discipline that examines the interconnections among diverse physical or engineered networks, information networks, biological networks, cognitive and semantic networks, and social networks. This field of science seeks to discover common principles,...
- Organizational chartOrganizational chartAn organizational chart is a diagram that shows the structure of an organization and the relationships and relative ranks of its parts and positions/jobs...
- Social balance theorySocial balance theorySocial balance theory is a class of theories within social network theory which attempts to describe how individual desires to reduce affective cognitive dissonance influence in a gtant component among social agents is "sentiment". These sentiments can result in the emergence of two groups...
- SociomappingSociomappingSociomapping is a method developed for processing and visualization of relational data . It uses the data-landscape metaphor, creating a visually coded picture resembling a map that can be interpreted with similar rules as navigation in the landscape...
- SociometrySociometrySociometry is a quantitative method for measuring social relationships. It was developed by psychotherapist Jacob L. Moreno in his studies of the relationship between social structures and psychological well-being....
- Barry WellmanBarry WellmanBarry Wellman, FRSC directs NetLab as the S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. His areas of research are community sociology, the Internet, human-computer interaction and social structure, as manifested in social networks in communities and organizations...