We examined differences between school classes with
respect to three aspects of psychosocial
adjustment at school, namely the extent that children in the class liked
to play with each
other, the number of teacher-reported behaviour problems, and children's
feelings of well-being at school. The sample consisted of 1282 4- to 5-year-olds from 94
school classes and
51 schools, but due to nonresponse actual sample sizes were somewhat smaller
for most
analyses. Multilevel analyses showed that on average 87% of the variance
was at the child
level, 11% at the class level, and 3% at the school level. This indicated
that a non-negligible
amount of variance could not be accounted for by factors at the child level.
Furthermore, this
variance was mainly associated with differences between classes instead
of differences
between schools. A set of variables that pertained to sociodemographic
characteristics of
schools, school facilities, organisational aspects of classrooms, and the
teacher did not
provide an adequate explanation for the differences in adjustment levels.
In contrast to these
traditional variables, social network indices yielded substantial correlations,
showed
consistent trends across the different adjustment measures, and fulfilled
the necessary
requirement that to explain differences between school classes the predictor
variables
themselves should differ for classes within the same school. These results
suggested that
aspects of the interpersonal relations of children in the classroom such
as proximity,
integration, and the amount of contact could be determinants of differences
between school
classes in psychosocial adjustment.