sociogram

A sociogram is a diagram that represents social relationships within a group, typically by mapping individuals as nodes and relationships as edges. It is a visual tool used to study social structures, interactions, and patterns such as central figures, cliques, isolates, and bridges. The term is often associated with sociometry, the method devised by Jacob L. Moreno in the early 20th century.

In practice, data are collected via surveys, interviews, or observation. Each person in the group is a node; ties are edges that may be undirected or directed, and may be unweighted or weighted by strength or frequency of interaction. The resulting graph can be analyzed with measures from social network analysis, such as degree centrality (how many connections a person has), betweenness (control of information flow), and clustering.

Used in classrooms to understand peer relations, in organizations to diagnose communication patterns, or in research to study social dynamics, sociograms can guide interventions to reduce exclusion, improve collaboration, or map information diffusion. Limitations include reliance on self-reported data, sensitivity to missing data, the snapshot nature of the data, and potential misinterpretation without context. They also require careful ethical considerations regarding privacy.