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Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 330–336

WCES-2010

A comparison of the loneliness levels of mainstreamed primary

students according to their sociometric status
Hatice Bakkalo÷lua *
a
Ankara University Faculty of Educational Sciences Depertmant of Special Education Cebeci Campus, Ankara 06590, Turkey

Received October 5, 2009; revised December 14, 2009; accepted January 4, 2010

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the differences in loneliness levels among children with low academic achievement,
special needs and without special needs in terms of sociometric status in mainstreamed elementary classrooms. Data were
collected via Student Information Form, Social Skills Rating System-Teacher Form, Children’s Loneliness Scale and Peer
Nomination Form. Findings revealed that the loneliness levels of students without special needs were significantly lower
than the other two groups and that students in all three groups rated as popular scored significantly lower on the
loneliness scale than students rated as rejected by their peers on sociometric measures.
© 2010 Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.

Keywords: Mainstreaming; primary school; sociometric status; peer nomination; loneliness; Children’s Loneliness Scale.

1. Introduction

Loneliness has been defined as an unpleasant experience where individuals perceive a discrepancy between the
desired and achieved patterns of their social networks (Peplau & Pearlman, 1982). The peer group is the most
important social network in children’s lives and has a high predictive value on an individual’s future social and
emotional adjustment (Galanaki & Kalantzi-Azizi, 1999). Many lonely students have difficulty developing
satisfactory peer relationships and friendships (Asher, Hymel, & Renshaw, 1984). Lonely children often experience
poor self-esteem and increased levels of anxiety and depression that may be accompanied by suicidal ideation
(McWhirter, 1990). Therefore, loneliness is almost always associated with difficulties in peer relationships (Yu,
Zhang & Yan, 2005).There is evidence that individual differences in acceptance are related to a variety of long term
negative adjustment outcomes, ranging from dropping out of school, to criminal behavior, to some form of serious
mental health disorder (Parker & Asher, 1987).
Asher et al, (1984) found that more than 10% of children from third through sixth grade reported feelings of
loneliness and social dissatisfaction, and children’s feelings of loneliness were significantly related to their
sociometric status. A consistent result in studies (Asher et al., 1984; Asher & Wheeler, 1985; Cassidy & Asher,
1992; Kaya, 2005; Margalit, Tur-Kaspa, & Most, 1999; Qualter & Munn, 2002; Renshaw & Brown, 1993; Williams

*Hatice Bakkalo÷lu. Tel: +90 312 3633350; Fax: +90 312 3636545.
E-mail address: hbceber@yahoo.com.

1877-0428 © 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.020
 Hatice Bakkaloğlu / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 330–336 331

& Asher, 1992; Yu et al., 2005) is that peer-rejected children are significantly lonelier than children of popular,
average, neglected, or controversial status. This can especially be a problem for children with academic problems
and/or special needs.
Studies concerning mainstreaming practices have revealed that support services for the student and the classroom
teacher result in student academic (Freeman, 2000) and social achievement (Lewis & Doorlag, 1999). Salend (1998)
claimed that mainstreamed students communicated more with others, received social support more often from others
and that their friendships lasted longer compared to students in segregated educational settings (Salend, 1998).
Despite the positive consequences of mainstreaming, mainstreamed students have known to experience difficulties
in peer relations such as being accepted less and being rejected more (Roberts & Zubrick, 1992; Stone & La Greca,
1990; Taylor, Asher, & Williams, 1987). Studies have also found that students with special needs (Heiman &
Margalit, 1998; Luftig, 1988; Taylor et al., 1987; Pavri & Luftig, 2000; Pavri & Monda-Amaya, 2000; Pierson &
Edwards, 2003; Williams & Asher, 1992) as well as low academic achievement (Margalit, 1996; Pierson &
Edwards, 2003; Salomon & Strobel, 1996) show higher levels of loneliness compared to students without special
needs.
Despite the literature on the sociometric status of mainstreamed students in Turkey (Akçamete & Ceber, 1998;
BaydÕk & Bakkalo÷lu, 2009; Vuran, 2005), no studies concerning the loneliness levels of this population exist.
Nevertheless, data regarding the sociometric status and the loneliness levels of these students is critical in
identifying the necessary for support services and enhancing the effectiveness of mainstreaming practices in general.
The purpose of this study is to compare the loneliness levels of low achieving students, students with special
needs and students without special needs in terms of their sociometric status, in mainstreamed classrooms. Two
research questions were posed:
1. Are there any differences in the loneliness scores among low achieving, special needs and without special
needs students?
2. Are there any differences in the loneliness scores among low achieving, special needs and without special
needs students according to their sociometric status?

2. Method

2.1. Participants

The sample consisted of 739 elementary students in 21 classrooms chosen across 7 schools with mainstreaming
practices, in Mamak, Ankara. The students were divided into three groups for research purposes.
Students with low academic achievement. These students did not meet the criteria for special needs but were rated
as significantly below average in academic achievement in the classroom by their teachers. This group of students
was identified according to the following procedures. Firstly, the teachers specified whether each student had
academic difficulties or not on the Student Information Form. Thirty two of the students were reported to be so.
Secondly, the teachers filled out the The Academic Competence Scale (ACS) of the Social Skills Rating System-
Teacher Form (SSRS-TF) for each of their students. The ACS scores of the students revealed that the scores of the
low achievement, the special needs and the no special needs groups were between 9-24 (M=14.00, SD=4.19), 9-31
(M=16.31, SD=8.46) and 27-45 arasÕnda (M=33.75, SD=17.03), respectively. Gresham and Elliot (1990) reported
that a total score of 26 or lower is used as a basis for classifying an individual student as low achieving.
Students with special needs. This group consisted of 32 students identified by the Guidance and Research Centres
as eligible for mainstreaming.
Students without special needs. This group consisted of 674 students who did not display any academic problems
or special needs. Forty of these students were randomly chosen to tackle the two research questions, according to the
other two groups’ age, gender and grade level. The chi-square coefficients for these variables across the three groups
showed no significant differences (age [X2 (2) =5.21, p>.05], gender [X2 (2) =4.68, p>.05], grade level [X2 (2)
=1.65, p>.05]). The demographic characteristics of the sample are displayed in the Table 1.
332 Hatice Bakkaloğlu / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 330–336

Table 1: The Demographic Characteristics of the Students

With Low Academic Achievement With Special Needs Without Special Needs
9 18 13 27
Age
10 14 19 13
Total 32 32 40
Female 8 13 20
Grade Gender

Male 24 20 20
Total 32 32 40
3 12 14 21
4 20 18 19
Total 32 32 40

2.2. Instruments

Student Information Form (SIF). This form contains questions about the students, regarding school, branch,
grade, gender, age, teacher opinions of the student’s academic performance in the study.
Social Skills Rating System-Teacher Form (SSRS-TF). SSRS-TF developed by Gresham and Elliot (1990) has
been adapted for the Turkish population by Sucuo÷lu and Özokçu (2005). SSRS-TF is an instrument developed for
grades K-6 and requires the teacher to rate each student on a Likert-type scale. In this study, this instrument was
used to evaluate the social skills, problem behaviors and academic competence of the students. There are three main
scales in SSRS-TF: Sosyal Skills, Problem Behaviors, and Academic Competence (ACS). Only the ACS was used
in this study. ACS measures teacher perceptions of academic achievement, requiring the teacher's judgment of the
students’ academic and/or learning behaviors as compared to other children in the same classroom. This scale
consists of nine items tapping reading and mathematics ability, parental encouragement, and overall academic
performance. The ACS items are rated on a percentage ranking of class wide functioning (i.e. 1=lowest 10% of the
class, 5=highest 10% of class). The lowest score that can be achieved on ACS is 9 and the highest score is 45. After
summing responses to the items, scores can range from a low ranking of 9 to a high ranking of 45, with higher
scores indicating greater academic competence. A total score of 26 or lower was used as a basis for classifying an
individual student as a low achiever. This would mean that the teachers had an average rating of either one (lowest
10% of the class) or two (lowest 20% of the class) on each item of the academic competence portion of the SSRS-
TF for that student (Gresham & Elliot, 1990). In the adapted version of SSRT-TF (Sucuo÷lu & Özokçu, 2005) no
items were dropped out for the Academic Competence Scale and this factor explained 87.06% of the total variance.
The item analysis showed that all items could discriminate the high and low achieving students. The item total
correlations were reported to be between.40 ile .77 and Cronbach Alpha for the total score to be .97.
Children’s Loneliness Scale (CLS). CLS developed by Asher et al., in 1984 and revised by Asher and Wheeler in
1985 has been adapted to the Turkish population by Kaya (2005). The original scale consists of 24 items with a 5-
point Likert-type rating to identify the extent to which a student feels each item best describes him or her. Sixteen
primary items examine students’ feelings of loneliness, sosyal adequacy and inadequacy, and subjective estimations
of peer status. Eight “filler” items focus on students’ hobbies or preferred activities and are designed to help students
feel more relaxed and open about indicating their feelings on the questionnaire. Children indicated how suitable
each item was for them on a scale from 1 (“That’s always true about me”) to 5 (“That’s not true at all about me”).
After summing responses to the primary items, scores can range from a low of 16 to a high of 80, with higher scores
indicating greater feelings of loneliness. The adapted version of CLS (Kaya, 2005) consists of 19 items with eleven
primary and eight filler items. According to the principal component analysis, it was seen that the factor analysis
that eleven primary items for 3nd-4th grades show a single factor structure. Internal consistency coefficients of the
scale were found as .87 and reliability coefficients calculated by the test-retest method was found as .76 for 3nd and
4th grades. In addition, it was investigated whether the scale was able to distinguish the popular and the rejected
students’ level of loneliness, and it was found that there was a significant difference between the scores of these two
groups. After summing responses to the primary items, scores can range from 11 to 55, with higher scores indicating
greater feelings of loneliness.
Peer Nomination Form (PNF). This form was administered in a group format to determine each student’s
sociometric status. In the peer nomination method, liking (L) and disliking (D) scores of the students are gathered by
asking the group to make both positive and negative choices. In this study, students ordered three classmates as “like
 Hatice Bakkaloğlu / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 330–336 333

to play with them'” and “do not like to play with them” by starting with the one they preferred the most. For this
purpose, a form was prepared and given to the students with instructions in the beginning to explain what they were
supposed to do, followed by a fill-in-the-blanks section to list the name of the classmates they liked to play with and
the ones they did not. For 'like to play with”, the most preferred student received a score of 3, the second a score of 2
and the least preferred a score of 1. For each class, the total scores for the students nominated positively and a
standard L score for each student in the class were obtained. Similarly, for “not like to play with”, the most preferred
student received a score of 3, the second a score of 2 and the least preferred given a score of 1. For each class, the
total scores for the students who received negative nomination scores and a standard D score for each student in the
class were obtained. Dimensions of sociometric status, social preference (SP) and social impact (SI) scores were
then derived from standardized L and D scores. SP score was computed as the L score minus D score, SI score was
computed as the sum of the L and D scores (Stone & La Greca, 1990). By using L, D, SP and SI scores, each student
then was classified as fitting into one of the following six subsociometric groups according to the measures used by
Asher and Dodge (1986) in sociometric classification: a) popular: SP>1.0, L>0 ve D<0; b) rejected: SP<-1.0, L<0
ve D>0; c) neglected: SI<-1.0, L<0 ve D<0; d) controversial: SI>1.0, L>0 ve D>0; e) average: SP and SI scores
between -.5 and .5, f) other: students not falling into one of these groups.

3. Results

The means and standard deviations for the loneliness scores across sociometric status of the students are
displayed in Table 2.

Table 2. The means and standard deviations for the loneliness scores across sociometric status of the students

Groups Sociometric Status N Mean SD

Popular 2 18.00 1.41
With Low Academic

Rejected 21 33.33 9.28

Achievement

Neglected 3 25.33 8.96

Controversial 2 37.00 4.24
Average 2 13.00 1.41
Other 2 16.50 7.77
Total 32 29.53 10.75
Popular 2 17.50 2.12
Rejected 15 36.33 6.95
With Special

Neglected 8 31.25 11.62

Needs

Controversial - - -
Average 3 29.00 11.26
Other 4 25.50 7.04
Total 32 31.84 9.72
Popular 13 17.00 6.87
Without Special

Rejected 8 27.75 13.55

Neglected 6 22.83 9.30
Needs

Controversial 2 33.50 6.36

Average 3 19.66 3.78
Other 8 28.25 6.08
Total 40 23.30 9.78

3.1. Are there any differences in the loneliness scores among low achieving, special needs and no special needs
students?

A one-way between groups analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of group on loneliness
score, as measured by the CLS (Table 3). There was a statistically significant difference at the p<.05 level on
loneliness scores for the three groups [F(2-101)=7.03, p<.05]. Post-hoc comparisons using the LSD test indicated that
the mean score of students without special needs (M=23.30, SD=9.78) was significantly different from the other two
groups (M=31.84, SD=9.72). This finding indicates that students without special needs display lower levels of
loneliness than either low achievers or special needs students.
334 Hatice Bakkaloğlu / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 330–336

Table 3. The One – Way ANOVA Results for the Loneliness Scores across the Groups of Students

Sum of Square df Mean Square F p Paired Comparison

Between Groups 1428.951 2 714.475 7.038 .001 Without Special Needs-With Low Academic Achievement
Within Groups 10252.588 101 101.511 Without Special Needs-With Special Needs
Total 11681.538 103

3.2. Are there any differences in the loneliness scores among low achieving, special needs and no special needs
students according to their sociometric status?

3.2.1. The loneliness scores of low achieving students according to their sociometric status

A one-way between groups analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of sociometric status on
loneliness scores of students with low academic achievement, as measured by the CLS (Table 4). There was a
statistically significant difference at the p<.05 level on CLS scores for the six groups [F(2-26)=4.29, p<.05]. Post-hoc
comparisons using the LSD test indicated that the mean score of popular students (M=18.00, SD=1.41) was
significantly different from the mean score of rejected students (M=33.33, SD=9.28) and the mean score of
controversial students (M=37.00, SD=4.24); the mean score of rejected students (M=33.33, SD=9.28) was
significantly different from the mean score of average students (M=13.00, SD=1.41) and the mean score of other
students (M=16.50, SD=7.77) and the mean score of controversial students (M=37.00, SD=4.24) was significantly
different from the mean score of average students (M=13.00, SD=1.41) and the mean score of other students
(M=16.50, SD=7.77). These findings indicate that popular students reported lower levels of loneliness than rejected
and controversial students and that rejected and controversial students had higher levels of loneliness than students
in the average and other sociometric group.

Table 4. The One Way ANOVA Results for the Loneliness Scores of Low Achieving Students Across Sociometric Status

Sum of Square df Mean Square F p Paired Comparison

Popular-Rejected
Between Groups 1620.135 2 324.027 4.286 .006
Popular-Controversial
Rejected-Average
Within Groups 1965.833 26 75.609
Rejected-Other
Controversial-Average
Total 3585.969 31
Controversial-Other

3.2.2. The loneliness scores of special needs students according to their sociometric status

A one-way between groups analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of sociometric status on
loneliness score of students with special needs, as measured by the CLS (Table 5). There was a statistically
significant difference at the p<.05 level on CLS scores for five groups [F(2-34)=2.911, p<.05]. Post-hoc comparisons
using the LSD test indicated that the mean score of rejected students (M=36.33, SD=6.95) differed significantly
from the mean score of popular students (M=17.00, SD=6.87) and the mean score of other students (M=25.50,
SD=7.04). This finding shows that rejected students experienced higher levels of loneliness compared to students in
the popular and other sociometric groups.

Table 5: The One Way ANOVA Results for the Loneliness Scores of Special Needs Students Across Sociometric Status

Sum of Square df Mean Square F p Paired Comparison

Between Groups 901.885 4 225.471 2.998 .036 Popular-Rejected
Within Groups 2030.333 27 75.198 Other-Rejected
Total 2932.219 31

3.2.3. The loneliness scores of students without special needs according to their sociometric status

A one-way between groups analysis of variance was conducted to explore the impact of sociometric status on
 Hatice Bakkaloğlu / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 2 (2010) 330–336 335

loneliness scores of student without special needs, as measured by the CLS (Table 6). There was a statistically
significant difference at the p<.05 level on CLS scores for the six groups [F(2-34)=2.911, p<.05]. Post-hoc
comparisons using the LSD test indicated that the mean score of popular students (M=17.00, SD=6.87) was
significantly different from the mean score of rejected students (M=27.75, SD=13.55), the mean score of
controversial students (M=33.50, SD=6.36) and the mean score of other students (M=28.25, SD=6.08). This
indicates that popular students had lower levels of loneliness compared to students in the rejected, controversial and
other sociometric groups.

Table 6. The One Way ANOVA Results for the Loneliness Scores of Students Without Special Needs Across Sociometric Status

Sum of Square df Mean Square F p Paired Comparison

Between Groups 1119.400 5 223.880 2.911 .027 Popular-Rejected
Within Groups 2615.000 34 76.912 Popular-Controversial
Total 3734.400 39 Popular-Other

4. Discussion and Conclusion

Taken together, our findings indicate that the loneliness levels of students without special needs is lower than that
of low achievers and special needs students and that the loneliness levels of low achievers and special needs students
were similar. The loneliness levels of the three groups were also found to differ according to sociometric status. A
similar finding in all three groups was that the loneliness levels of popular students were significantly lower than
that of rejected students. These findings are mainly parallel with the literature (Asher et al., 1984; Asher & Wheeler,
1985; Cassidy & Asher, 1992; Kaya, 2005; Margalit et al., 1999; Qualter & Munn, 2002; Renshaw & Brown, 1993;
Williams & Asher, 1992; Yu et al., 2005).
The debilitating effects of loneliness highlight the need to develop strategies to teach children how to cope with
these unpleasant feelings (Pavri & Monda-Amaya, 2000). On the basis of his literature review, Pavri (2001)
suggested certain critical student and teacher generated interventions that can increase social support and reduce
feelings of loneliness in students. These approaches to working with students who are lonely include a) social skills
training, b) creating opportunities for social interaction, c) creating an accepting classroom climate, d) teaching
adaptive coping strategies, and e) enhancing student’s self-esteem. Further research is needed on the impact of these
key interventions aimed to reduce loneliness in students.

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