Triple Alignment: Congruence of Perceived Preschool Social Networks Between Teacher, Students, and Researchers

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Use of Classroom Observations to Reveal Relationships Between Evaluative and Structural Program Components

Abstract

Classroom social network has been shown to influence young children’s cognitive, social-emotional, and language development. This network construct has been assessed with different informants and is usually transformed into binary networks for further statistical network analyses. Findings regarding the extent to which different informants provide congruent information about classroom social networks are mixed. There is also a lack of examination about how the level of congruency can vary by network transformations. This study addressed these issues in one preschool classroom containing 16 children who formed 240 dyadic interactions. Results showed that teacher-report and researcher-report networks were more congruent with each other than when compared with children-report networks. Binary transformation approaches tended to decrease the level of network congruence across informants.

Authors

• Jing Chen, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

• Tzu-Jung Lin, The Ohio State University

• Kelly Purtell, The Ohio State University

• Laura M. Justice, The Ohio State University

• Jessica Logan, The Ohio State University - Columbus