AUTHOR=Kulawiak Pawel R. , Urton Karolina , Krull Johanna , Hennemann Thomas , Wilbert Jürgen TITLE=Internalizing Behavior of Sociometrically Neglected Students in Inclusive Primary Classrooms – A Methodological Issue? JOURNAL=Frontiers in Education VOLUME=5 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2020.00032 DOI=10.3389/feduc.2020.00032 ISSN=2504-284X ABSTRACT=
Internalizing problems in children belong to the category of special educational needs called emotional and behavioral difficulties. Recent decades have witnessed a critical discussion about whether children and adolescents experiencing internalizing problems are at risk of being sociometrically neglected (neither liked nor disliked by their peers). Previous studies have shown evidence both for and against the association between internalizing problems and neglected sociometric status. These contradictory results may be due to the following methodological aspects: (1) shortcomings of sociometric status classification methods (arbitrariness of the sociometric classification rules) and (2) different operationalizations of internalizing problems (broadband and narrowband dimensions of behavior). The aim of the present study is to investigate empirically whether and to what extent these methodological aspects lead to contradictory results on the internalizing behavior of neglected students. This question is investigated using a sample of students (