Gender Differences in Classroom Sympathy and Antipathy: A Digital Sociometric Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper examined gender differences in sympathy and antipathy among fourth-grade students using a large-scale digital sociometric test. It found that children tended to prefer same-gender peers and that girls reported more disliked classmates than boys. 

General Comments
The paper presents a rich bibliography, though it does not focus exclusively on the sample studied. Nevertheless, it is relevant to the topic and includes contemporary references.

How was the concepts of "sympathy" and "antipathy" interpreted by students when asked to nominate classmates? How can we be confident that all participants understood and applied these terms in the same way?

Ethical considerations and data protection issues: Were permissions and safeguards for sensitive data collection and student privacy adequately addressed? This needs to be explicitly mentioned.

Specific Comments
APA citation formatting:

In-text citations with three or more authors should use only the first author's last name followed by "et al." and the year (APA 7th edition).

Remove the period after “gender” in the citation: “Homophily also exists in people’s gender (Rose & Rudolph, 2006)”—no period after “gender”.

Introduction (Section 1.1):

The statement "This sample size allows us to investigate the differences between genders in terms of their relationships of sympathy and antipathy on a large scale with statistically robust and, therefore, replicable results" could be phrased more modestly to avoid overclaiming the generalizability of the findings.

Materials and Methods (Section 2):

The description is detailed, but it might be improved by adding references to support the chosen statistical methods.

Results (Section 3):

All statistical terms (e.g., p for significance) should be italicized and formatted according to APA 7th guidelines, with the appropriate number of decimal places.

The reported effect size should be interpreted, not just presented numerically.

The section contains too many statistics. Consider focusing on the key results, mentioning only p-values for non-significant findings.

 

 

Overall, this is a well-written paper, with a rich bibliography and engaging content.

 

Author Response

Comments 1:The paper presents a rich bibliography, though it does not focus exclusively on the sample studied. Nevertheless, it is relevant to the topic and includes contemporary references.

Response 1: We thank the reviewer for his/her time and dedication to thoroughly and thoughtfully reviewing our article and his/her positive assessment of our bibliography. While it is true that most of our cited literature does not focus exclusively on the specifically on the sample studied, we made a deliberate effort to include regionally relevant research. In particular, we cited the study by Berger & Dijkstra (2013)—a work conducted in Chile—which appears in lines 88-97 and 142–147 of the manuscript. This study, like ours, explores antipathy dynamics among peers, specifically examining how popularity influences antipathy nominations. Although their sample involved slightly older students and was smaller in size than ours, it provides valuable contextual grounding for our work. However, a key difference with our work is that we frame our research using the School Well-being Model. In response to the reviewer’s observation, we have revised line 89 to more clearly indicate that this study was conducted in Chile, reinforcing its relevance to our research context.

Comments 2: How was the concepts of "sympathy" and "antipathy" interpreted by students when asked to nominate classmates? How can we be confident that all participants understood and applied these terms in the same way?

Response 2: We thank the reviewer for these insightful questions. The constructs of sympathy and antipathy were not explicitly introduced to the students, as such terminology could be too abstract for children of this age. Rather, the Conecta Ideas digital platform—which facilitated the original data collection by participating schools as part of a mathematics initiative—used more accessible questions such as "Which classmates do you like?" and "Which classmates do you dislike?" These types of questions are widely used in sociometric research to operationalize peer sympathy and antipathy, particularly with young populations (as for example, in studies such as Berger & Dijkstra, 2013; Fortuin et al., 2014; Kochel et al., 2017; Martin et al., 2021, all cited in our article). This phrasing ensures accessibility while preserving conceptual alignment with the constructs under study. It is also important to clarify that the data used in this study were obtained from a publicly accessible, anonymized dataset, and our role was limited to secondary analysis. As such, we were not involved in the original administration or data collection procedures.

Comments 3: Ethical considerations and data protection issues: Were permissions and safeguards for sensitive data collection and student privacy adequately addressed? This needs to be explicitly mentioned.

Response 3: We thank the reviewer for this important observation and fully agree that data collection involving children must meet high ethical and privacy standards. We clarify that the data used in this study were obtained from a public dataset previously collected by participating schools through the Conecta Ideas digital platform, as part of a mathematics initiative, and were later made available for secondary analysis in an anonymized format. To ensure compliance with data protection standards, we confirm that all student data was fully anonymized, including individual identifiers, classroom labels, and school names. To address this observation, we added this information in lines 197-199.

Comments 4: In-text citations with three or more authors should use only the first author's last name followed by "et al." and the year (APA 7th edition).

Response 4: We thank the reviewer for pointing this out. In accordance with APA 7th edition guidelines, we fixed all the citations that have three or more authors and didn’t use et al. We made changes on the following lines: 25, 35-38, 48, 76, 102-103, 183-184, 384, 396-397.

Comments 5: Remove the period after “gender” in the citation: “Homophily also exists in people’s gender (Rose & Rudolph, 2006)”—no period after “gender”.

Response 5: We appreciate the reviewer for pointing out that typo. It has been corrected on line 104.

Comments 6: The statement "This sample size allows us to investigate the differences between genders in terms of their relationships of sympathy and antipathy on a large scale with statistically robust and, therefore, replicable results" could be phrased more modestly to avoid overclaiming the generalizability of the findings.

Response 6: We appreciate this observation and fully agree that the original phrasing could overstate the generalizability of our findings. Our intention was to highlight the strength of having an analysis with a large sample. We revised the sentence to have a more cautious tone. We changed the sentence in the line 161 to 163:

• • “This sample size allows us to investigate the differences between genders in terms of their relationships of sympathy and antipathy on a large scale with statistically robust and, therefore, replicable results” to:
  • "This large sample size provides sufficient statistical power to explore gender differences in sympathy and antipathy nominations with a high degree of internal robustness."

Comments 7: The description is detailed, but it might be improved by adding references to support the chosen statistical methods.

Response 7: We thank the reviewer for this helpful suggestion. In response, we have added a referenced paragraph supporting the use of the selected statistical methods in lines 246–249.

Comments 8: All statistical terms (e.g., p for significance) should be italicized and formatted according to APA 7th guidelines, with the appropriate number of decimal places.

Response 8: We sincerely thank the reviewer for their attention to the formatting and clarity of our article. We revised the italicization the statistical notations according to to APA 7^th edition guidelines to include the italicization and appropriate decimal precision. We made changes to line 260 to 364. We also adapted the table 2, 3 and 4 to have the same number of decimals.

Comments 9: The reported effect size should be interpreted, not just presented numerically.

Response 9: We appreciate your observation. We added the interpretations of all reported effect sizes, indicating their magnitude (small, medium or large) based on Cohen’s thresholds. We made changes on the following lines: 268, 271, 314, 317, 321, 324, 328, 331, 334, 337, 341, 344, 347, 352, 355 and 361.

Comments 10: The section contains too many statistics. Consider focusing on the key results, mentioning only p-values for non-significant findings.

Response 10: We thank the reviewer for this suggestion. However, we believe it is important to retain the full statistical information in order to ensure precision and transparency in reporting the results.

Comments 11: Overall, this is a well-written paper, with a rich bibliography and engaging content.

Response 11: We sincerely thank the reviewer for this encouraging feedback. We are grateful for the thoughtful review process.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper investigates gender differences with regard to classroom sympathies and antipathies. The data are based on a sociometric study conducted on a large sample of 3,090 Chilean fourth-grade students from Santiago. The research is guided by clearly defined questions concerning the nomination of sympathy and antipathy, as well as the potential magnitude of differences in nominations between boys and girls. Using the digital platform Conecta Ideas, students responded to two questions:
Which classmates do you like? (Sympathy)
Which classmates do you dislike? (Antipathy)

Based on the collected data, a statistical analysis (independent Student's t-test) was conducted to determine the statistical significance of the differences. The results showed that there was no statistically significant difference in the number of given sympathy nominations made by girls and boys, nor with regard to their attendance in mixed-gender or single-gender classrooms. A statistically significant difference was found concerning sympathy towards intra-gender peers, which aligns with findings from other studies. Moreover, the study revealed that girls showed a greater tendency toward antipathy nominations than boys.

The main conclusion of this study is that “social dynamics, particularly peer rejection, are not evenly distributed across genders and may reflect distinct emotional or social expectations tied to group identity and visibility, especially for girls.”

Although this is a relatively well-researched area, the study deepens scholarly understanding of patterns of gender homophily. The research findings are coherently structured, clearly explained, and well-argued.

In the following sentence, the authors mention experimental results:
“It should provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation, as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn.”
This may be confusing, as the study is sociometric rather than experimental in nature. In the table, three asterisks are occasionally used next to p-values. It would be advisable to explain below the table what these asterisks denote.

Given the quality of the paper, I recommend its publication, provided that the aforementioned comments are taken into account.

Author Response

Comments 1: In the following sentence, the authors mention experimental results: “It should provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation, as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn.” This may be confusing, as the study is sociometric rather than experimental in nature. In the table, three asterisks are occasionally used next to p-values. It would be advisable to explain below the table what these asterisks denote.

Response 1: First, we would like to thank the reviewer for the time and dedication devoted to thoroughly and thoughtfully reviewing our article. We sincerely appreciate your willingness to engage with our work and your kind words regarding its content. Secondly, we appreciate the reviewer’s comments, which we carefully considered and incorporated in the revision of our manuscript.

1. In response to the comment about the experimental results, we agree that could be misleading given that the study is sociometric. We revised the phrasing throughout the manuscript and deleted that word from line 256 of the article.
2. Regarding the table formatting, we have added explanatory notes below the tables to understand what the asterisks means (Significance: *p < .05; **p < .01; *** p < .001*).