Relation Between Talking and Sociometric Choices

摘要

Twelve case discussion groups, each consisting of five first year Master of Business Administration students, met for four sessions. After the first and fourth session, each group member completed a sociometric questionnaire which asked him to rank all the participants on (1) who contributed the best ideas, (2) who participated the most, (3) who guided the discussion, (4) who was the leader and (5) whom he liked. In addition, during the entire discussion, which lasted a maximum of 30 minutes, a continuous recording was made of the time each participant talked. The time was converted to a rank order, making a sixth ranked characteristic. When the average rank order on each characteristic was computed, holding the rank order on one of them constant, the data suggested that during the first sessions, each characteristic was positively and highly associated with talking. There was a single exception, namely, that the rank order on liking was not related to the rank order on any other characteristic. When the average rank orders were examined for the fourth session, however, this changed. There was a decided increase in the association of the ranks on liking with the other characteristics. Hence, after the fourth session, the rank orders on each of the six characteristics were highly and positively associated and there was no evidence of role differentiation. (Author)