The nature of children's social interactions at school

Interpersonal interactions are important for emotional and psychological wellbeing. One attempt to systematically assess social interactions among gifted children was presented by Manor-Bullock et al. (1995) in their Social Interaction Questionnaire (SIQ). However, no psychometric properties of this scale or the nature of the factors that form students' social interactions have been reported. The aim of this study to ascertain the underlying factor structure of students' social interactions on scores on the SIQ and to compare the responses of children attending a regular school to those in Manor-Bullock et al.'s cohort of gifted children. Two independent factors emerged from the data: social/popular and confident/studious with internal reliability of {alpha} = 0.82 and {alpha} = 0.60 respectively. There were no gender differences on these factors in the current data. Chi square analyses revealed concordance between gifted and regular-school children on seven of 16 comparable items. Discussion of the items demonstrating an association is presented. Confirmation of the current factor structure is necessary and a matched comparison with gifted children is recommended.