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ABSTRACT. Research on sociometric data collection and analysis methods is reviewed and implications for assessing the social status of mainstreamed children with learning difficulties are evaluated. Recommendations are made for changing existing procedures to account for factors specific to children with learning difficulties and to classrooms where mainstreaming is occurring. Variations between frequently used sociometric classification systems (which categorize children as popular, rejected, average, neglected, and controversial) are described, and information on their reliability and validity is discussed. Further reliability research with mainstreamed children is recommended, as is the application of theoretical accounts of affiliation in designing sociometric methods.
DURING THE PAST 20 YEARS, legislation in the United States and Europe has promoted the mainstreaming of children with learning difficulties and other disabilities, so that they are educated in mainstreamed schools with children who do not have disabilities rather than being educated in separate special schools. Roberts and Zubrick (1992) observed that mainstreaming is expected to benefit children with learning difficulties through "removing the stigma associated with segregated placements, facilitating the modelling of appropriate social behaviour by children without disabilities, and enhancing the social status of pupils with disabilities with their peers without disabilities" (p. 192).
Various reviewers who have examined the literature on the social status of children with learning difficulties and other intellectual, physical, or emotional disabilities concluded that children with disabilities have lower social status in mainstreamed classrooms than their nondisabled peers (Asher & Taylor, 1981; Gresham, 1982; Madden & Slavin, 1983). However, Morrison (1981) contended that in studies with children who have learning difficulties, "the multitude of variations in administration and scoring of sociometric measures have confused and limited the conclusions that can be made about the social status of mildly handicapped children among their non-handicapped peers" (p. 193).
These difficulties are not unique to sociometric research with children who have learning difficulties. McConnell and Odom (1986) noted that sociometrics are often implicitly categorized as a uniform method, whereas they actually encompass a number of different methods. Hence, even when similar data collection methods are used, different criteria (test items) make comparisons between different studies difficult, and even when data are collected using the same methods and criteria, they are often analyzed in quite different ways.
In this research, we...