Abstract
Children and adolescents interact in peer groups, which are known to influence a range of psychological and behavioral outcomes. In developmental psychology and related disciplines, social cognitive mapping (SCM), as implemented with the SCM 4.0 software, is the most commonly used method for identifying peer groups from peer report data. However, in a series of four studies, we demonstrate that SCM has an unacceptably high risk of false positives. Specifically, we show that SCM will identify peer groups even when applied to random data. We introduce backbone extraction and community detection as one promising alternative to SCM, and offer several recommendations for researchers seeking to identify peer groups from peer report data.
Highlights
Decades of research demonstrate the importance of peers for child and adolescent development and psychological well-being (Bukowski et al, 2018; Gifford-Smith & Brownell, 2003)
We report on four separate studies: The first study confirms that social cognitive mapping (SCM) can detect true positives, the second and third studies examine SCM’s risk of false positives under different conditions, and the fourth study explores backbone extraction and community detection as an alternative to SCM for identifying peer groups
Which matches our expectation based on observational data and confirms that SCM detects the true positives in this classroom
Summary
Decades of research demonstrate the importance of peers for child and adolescent development and psychological well-being (Bukowski et al, 2018; Gifford-Smith & Brownell, 2003). Identifying peer groups can be challenging and represents a critical measurement task for developmental and clinical researchers (Kindermann & Gest, 2018) To overcome these challenges, Cairns and colleagues proposed social cognitive mapping (SCM), a method of peer group identification that involves identifying peer groups using multiple peer reports of groups of children that interact together in a setting such as a classroom (Cairns et al, 1988; Cairns & Cairns, 1994). Perhaps the most direct approach is field observation: a researcher directly observes children’s interactions with one another in a naturalistic setting such as a classroom or playground (e.g., Cairns et al, 1985; Gest et al, 2003) From these observations, peer groups might be operationalized as sets of children seen to interact at all, to interact some minimum number of times, or to interact for some minimum duration. More often peer groups are measured using more indirect approaches that vary in terms of the source of the report and what is reported (see Table 1)
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