An Exploratory Study of Cottage Reputation in a Training School for Girls

Abstract

A pilot investigation of in formal social organization in a single cottage living unit at a training school for girls made necessary a preliminary assessment of the extent to which this unit was rep resentative of the other sixteen similar units. A reputational instrument was divised around a series of ad hoc dimensions impressionistically identified as salient in the description of dif ferent cottages at the school. The instrument was administered to the social work staff of the school and to the clinical psychol ogist. Results indicated that the cottage under intensive scrutiny was identified in reputational terms as one of the more strict, authoritarian living units at the training school. Both the utility and limitations of the reputational approach are considered in terms of the factors responsible for the development of a charac teristic reputation of an individual cottage.