Sociometric Techniques

Sociometry is the measurement of social interaction. The founder of the field is psychotherapist Jacob L. Moreno, who sought to develop a way to study how psychological well-being is related to social structures. Moreno defined the field as “the inquiry into the evolution and organization of groups and the position of individuals within them.” The goal of sociometry is thus to explore the hidden structures of group dynamics. This can identify persons who are well connected, isolated, or in subgroups that comprise alliances and cliques. Since the 1970s, sociometry has focused significantly on the properties of the network rather than describing specific persons. This entry describes the data collected in sociometry, computational techniques used to analyze those data, and graphical techniques used to visualize those ...