Sociometric status: its stability and validity among neglected, rejected and popular children

Although important distinctions among sociometrically rejected, neglected, and popular children have been reported in the literature, concerns have been raised about use of negative peer nominations in identifying these children. A revised procedure developed by Asher and Dodge [Developmental Psychology, 22, 444-449 (1986)] eliminates the need to obtain negative peer nominations. In the present study, the construct validity of this revised procedure was explored and its long-term stability examined over 6, 12 and 18 months. Our findings establish significant differences on several indices among rejected, neglected and popular children. However, the differences between rejected and popular children were more robust than those between neglected and popular children, who failed to differ from one another on most of the measures. Moreover, fairly good long-term stability was found for popular and rejected status, whereas the long-term stability for neglected status was quite poor. These findings were addressed in the context of similar research employing negative nomination methods. Implications for the identification of at-risk children were also discussed.