Psychological diagnostics of interpersonal interaction by means of sociometric survey

Abstract

The article explores one of the most complex for cognition psychological phenomena, namely, intragroup relationships in systems “student – student”, “student – microgroup”, “student – group”, “microgroup – microgroup”, “microgroup – group”, etc. The author proposes a number of improvements to the sociometric survey procedure. In particular, it is substantiated the feasibility of applying several sociometric criteria simultaneously to enable the expression of sympathy / antipathy caused by the cognitive and emotional component. It is known that one and the same person in one’s social group can be a sociometric leader by one criterion and, at the same time, an outsider by another. Also, on the basis of summarizing the results of the empirical survey of 52 student’s academic groups at three HEI (higher education institution) of Ukraine and on the basis of theoretical substantiation of the feasibility and possibility of objective delimitation the stages of a small social group development on the material of quantitative indicators, it is proposed to use as a criterion for such delimitation the quantitative parameters of the expansiveness index of group members’ interaction: diffuse group (0 – 0,16), association (0,17 – 0,20), cooperation (0,21 – 0,30), autonomy (0,31 – 0,36), collective (0,37 – 1,0). At the same time, the article highlights a number of psychological patterns identified in the course of the study, related to the emergence and course of the process of interpersonal contact in student’s academic groups. The researcher pays a special attention to the dynamics of students’ intragroup relationships in different courses of study, to the balance of rational-logical and figuratively-emotional causes of the positive microclimate of small social groups, as well as to the normal and anomalous lines of their development. These patterns and trends enrich the subject field of several disciplinary branches of psychology, namely: pedagogical, age, and social.