Factorial Studies on Educational Objectives (1)

An Analysis of Sociality

Abstract

This study tries to find psychological natures of the factors which are supposed to exist in the area of sociality, and to attempt an analysis and classification of educational objectives from a factor-analytical point of view.
Thirty-four variables concerning sociality in the broadest sense were observed for eighty college students, both male and female and, of age 20 in average. Their lintercorrelations in terms of product-moment coefficients were analysed by the complete centroid method until five factors have been found. Rotations of the axes for a simpler structure made it possible for us to give justifiable interpretations to four of the five factors.
The first factor is one which is characterized by emotional and volitional activeness, agreeableness, or sociableness in human relations. The second and the third factors are both related to intellectual abilities concerning social situations, and so can be called social intelligence factors ; but the difference is that the former relates only to the width of the social knowledge, while the latter to higher intellectual social abilities. The fourth factor is concerned with the range of activities for social amusements and recreations ; the motorial nature of this factor contrasts with the emotional and volitional features of the first, and with the intellectual character of the second and the third factors.
The statistical results show that the first and the second factors are most important and the third factor comes next, while the last one has the least value so far as the present data are concerned. When we examine, however, the contents of these factors withs pecial reference to the problems of educational eyaluation, we find that they are abler to present factorial verifications to the general ideas of the taxonomies of educational objectives, and that, in order to inquire into the nature of sociality as one of the objectives, the internal structure of the first factor should be analysed into details by further studies.