Children's peer status in school settings - Current and prospective assessment procedures

Peer nomination and peer rating procedures are reviewed with regard to thei r relevance to assessing children's social acceptance and social status in school settings. Social acceptance is the child's actual liking by other ch ildren, whereas social status is the child's comparative social standing or friendship with classmates. Peer nomination sociometric techniques are mor e appropriate for measuring social acceptance in children, whereas peer nom ination techniques are more suited to assessing children's social status. T he strengths, limitations and potential applications of peer nomination and peer rating sociometric methods are discussed. A new method of capitalizin g on the relative strengths of both peer rating and peer nomination procedu res is presented.