ABSTRACT
The preceding chapters on measurement and social cognition dealt with methods for assessing characteristics and behaviors of individual persons. Properties of single persons are known as monadic variables. A person’s attitude toward abortion, for instance, may be considered monadic because it refers only to the individual’s own attitude. In many areas of social science, however, social scientists may be interested in studying persons who are interacting in dyads (pairs) or small groups. In this case, we are not assessing properties of the individuals separately, but rather the nature of their relationship, or the structure or process or outcomes of their interaction. A dyadic measurement refers to characteristics of the relationship between two persons; group measures refer to characteristics of interacting groups of three or more persons. This chapter considers how to assess variables that are fundamentally dyadic or group level phenomena.
