SociometryPro — specialized software for conducting, processing, and analyzing sociometric research based on J. L. Moreno’s method. It automates result calculation and helps present relationships within a group in a form convenient for further professional analysis.
The program does not replace a psychologist, sociologist, or other specialist and does not draw conclusions for them. Its task is to handle the routine part of the study: organizing source data, entering participants’ choices, calculating sociometric indicators, visualizing the structure of relationships, and preparing report materials.
Data and project organization
Work in SociometryPro is organized around projects. Each project brings together all data related to a particular task: participant groups, the participants themselves, criteria, studies, project users, and its settings.
Projects are saved in separate files and can be transferred to another computer with SociometryPro installed. The program also keeps a history of recently opened projects, which makes work easier when studies are conducted regularly or several groups are managed at the same time.
If necessary, access to a project can be restricted through authorization. Several users with their own logins and passwords can be created for one project. This helps protect study data from accidental or unauthorized access.
Groups and study participants
The program allows you to create separate participant groups and store information about each participant. You can specify a name, gender, date of birth or age, and an additional description.
The same group can be used in different studies. If several specialists work with the group, it does not need to be recreated on each computer: SociometryPro supports export and import of participant groups.
This approach is especially convenient for repeated studies when it is necessary to compare the state of the same group at different points in time.
Sociometric study criteria
Every sociometric study is based on a criterion — a question according to which participants choose one another.
For example:
“Who would you prefer to work with on the next stage of the project?”
In SociometryPro, you can create your own criteria and organize them into groups. For example, you can keep separate criteria for work teams, student groups, or specific types of studies. This makes it possible to gradually build your own library of questions and reuse them.
Creating a study
An individual study links a participant group and the selected criterion.
When creating it, you can define:
- the group participating in the study;
- the sociometric criterion used;
- the name and description of the study;
- the maximum number of choices allowed for each participant;
- whether negative choices can be used.
Thus, the same group can be studied several times using different criteria or the same criterion at different points in time.
Entering sociometric choices
After the survey is conducted, the results are entered into a special “Choices” window.
It is a sociomatrix in which rows and columns correspond to group members. For each pair, you can specify a positive choice or, if the study allows it, a negative choice.
This input method makes it possible to quickly transfer the results of a paper or oral survey into the program without manually building tables or performing further calculations.
Automatic calculation of sociometric indicators
After the choices are entered, SociometryPro calculates a number of individual and group indices.
For individual participants, the program calculates:
- weight — the proportion of the group for whom the participant is significant;
- emotional expansiveness — how broad the circle of people is whom the participant themselves considers significant;
- satisfaction — what proportion of the participant’s choices are mutual;
- status — an indicator that takes into account the positive and negative choices received.
For the group as a whole, the following are calculated:
- density of relationships;
- cohesion;
- stability;
- tension of relationships.
The indices are presented not only numerically but also as charts, which makes it easier to compare participants’ positions and the overall state of the group.
Relationship graph
One of the main visual analysis tools in SociometryPro is the sociometric graph.
Participants are shown as separate shapes, while the choices made between them are represented by arrows. Positive and negative choices can be displayed separately, or both types of connections can be viewed at the same time.
The position and appearance of graph elements can be changed manually to make the structure of a particular group more visually clear. Different formatting can also be used for positive and negative connections.
This representation helps reveal things that are much harder to notice in a regular table: mutual connections, separate subgroups, participants with many choices, people who are barely involved in interaction, and the overall configuration of relationships.
Sociometric target diagram
Another way to present the results is the социометрическая мишень.
Participants are distributed across its rings depending on the number of choices they receive. The target diagram makes it possible to see which participants fall into different levels of popularity within the group being studied.
The target diagram can be built for both positive and negative choices and is used together with other analysis tools rather than instead of them.
Comparing studies and analyzing dynamics
SociometryPro allows several result views to be opened at the same time and different studies to be compared with one another.
This is especially important for repeated sociometric studies. For example, a study can be conducted before organizational changes, training, or changes in group composition and then repeated after some time.
By comparing indices and the structure of connections, a specialist can assess how cohesion, tension, and the nature of interaction within the group have changed after the measures taken.
Reports and presentation of results
The results do not have to remain only inside the program. SociometryPro can generate reports for different project objects:
- a participant group;
- an individual participant;
- a group of criteria;
- an individual criterion;
- a specific study.
For a study, the report can include the sociomatrix, graphs of positive and negative choices, the combined graph, and calculated indicators. The report is transferred to Microsoft Word, where it can be further formatted, supplemented with the specialist’s conclusions, or used as the basis for a final document.
Graphical representations — the choice matrix, indices, graph, and target diagram — can also be printed directly from the program.
Workspace customization
SociometryPro provides detailed customization of the appearance of different analysis tools.
You can customize the appearance of:
- the object tree;
- the choice table;
- index charts;
- the sociometric graph;
- the target diagram;
- the generated report.
Fonts, sizes, element colors, the display of positive and negative choices, graph appearance, and other parameters can be configured. This makes it possible to adapt the presentation of results to a specific task and make it more convenient for analysis or presentation.
SociometryPro as a professional tool
The main purpose of SociometryPro is not automatic interpretation of relationships within a group, but automation of study processing.
The program organizes data, performs calculations, builds graphical representations, and prepares materials for analysis. However, conclusions about the state of the group, the reasons behind identified patterns, and the necessary actions are made by the specialist.
This division of work is what makes SociometryPro a practical tool: the computer handles repetitive calculations and result preparation, while the psychologist, sociologist, HR specialist, or teacher can focus on what truly requires professional expertise — understanding what is happening within the group and choosing the next steps.