Hatch, J.A. (1987). Status and social power in a kindergarten peer group. The Elementary School Journal, 88(1), 79-91.
I. Purpose - The purpose of this study was to improve our scientific understanding of how adult social competence is developed in childhood through a research investigation of children's strategies (active and reactive) for both acquiring and protecting their social status and power in situations of face-to-face interaction.
II. Method - The study used naturalistic methods (reconstruction of real-world events based on methods of participant observation and the collection of unobtrusive data). Subjects were 24 children (14 females and 10 males). All children were in kindergarten. Race, marital status of parents, and socioeconomic status of children were not controlled.
Hatch observed 80 hours of child-to-child interaction during 26 observation visits to a kindergarten class at a public school. Children's conversations were recorded. After each visit, Hatch wrote down the situational context of all observed conversations.
In addition, informal interviews were conducted with auxiliary persons (e.g. principal, classroom aide, parents, selected district staff). A formal interview was conducted with the kindergarten teacher. Also information was collected form school and district reports, official documents and student records. Data was analyzed by searching all collected information for patterns related to acquiring and protecting social status and power. Also, conversational data were analyzed for gender effects.
III. Results - Findings of the study were said to show that children utilized a wide variety of both active and interactive strategies for acquiring and keeping social status and power. The most frequently used strategies included self-promotion, responses to self-promotion, put-downs, responses to put-downs, dominance attempts, and responses to dominance attempts.
IV. Summary - It w...