Friends in the classroom:a comparison between two methods for the assessment of students' friendship networks

One of the methods used most often to assess students' friendships and friendship networks is the reciprocal nomination method. However, an often heard complaint is that this technique produces rather negative outcomes. This study compares the reciprocal nomination method with another method to assess students' friendships and friendship networks: Social Cognitive Mapping (SCM). The outcomes show that descriptions of students' friendships and friendship networks by both methods tend largely to overlap, even though SCM divides the students into smaller groups. The nomination method indeed yields a slightly more negative picture, labeling more students as "isolates". According to students, in most cases the group structure of SCM best reflects reality, whereas more than half of the teachers consider the nomination structure to best fit with reality. It is concluded that the differences between both methods are small, which seems to be primarily based on rather arbitrary decisions in the programs calculating students' scores and group composition.