COMMUNITY HEALTH STUDIES VOLUME VIII, NUMBER 2, 1984

THE MEASUREMENT OF SOCIAL CLASS

Ann Daniel

School of Sociology, University of New South Wales

Introduction The relevance of class and status in health

studies is repeatedly demonstrated as researchers report a close association with a variety of health outcomes.' Class retains its original Marxist connotation of ownership and control of productive resources and is indicated by measures of wealth and income. Status refers to position in society and this usage retains the Weberian sense of access to life chances based on a constellation of social and cultural factors like education, family background, associations, life styles and expectations. Class and status, although analytically distinct, are empirically closely intertwined. This interwoven character has led to these dimensions of economic and social advantage being subsumed into the categorization of 'social class'.* Social class describes the position of a person or group of persons occupies in society and it designates access to social and economic resources and to valued life experience. This abstract construct is originally and essentially sociological. In empirical studies it requires valid and measurable indicators.

The Measurement of Social Class This paper notes a variety of indicators that

are used to detect and measure the social class factor and it discusses occupational prestige scales used in Australian studies. The question of interest is how may it be detected validly and measured reliably. Although some of the number of widely used indicators of social class are more discriminating than others, the indicator chosen depends partly on what data the researcher may gather. Commonly chosen indicators include occupation, education, income, residential address, organisational rank or classification. Less frequently used as barometers are type of housing, condition of tenancy, ownership of cars, televisions and other consumer durables. Prestige of occupation is a powerful measure of social class because it largely encompasses these other factors and because people will normally provide

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occupational information fairly willingly. Occupational prestige provides a measured indication of the total advantage, social and economic, typically enjoyed by people. Occupation is a highly visible fact designating a person's relation to the productive process of the economy and indicating where authority is held and mater ia l rewards go . Educt iona l qualifications, typical income, probable wealth, security, authority and autonomy and conditions of work are inherent characteristics of occupation. The prestige accorded occupation is found to take these into acount.3 In Australia at least four scales have been published in the last twenty years. There is a fairly recent New Zealand scale compounded from education and income characteristic of each occupation.4

The Work of Congalton A pioneering study was undertaken by Athol

Congalton from 1959 to 1961.5 He listed 134 occupations and invited 303 Sydney participants of a "man in the street" survey (selected by students instructed to draw from four occupational groups) to categorise their occupations on a 1 to 7 scale. This method was used in a larger Australia-wide survey involving 1189 university students. Congalton found marked correspondence in the occupational ratings produced by each group. This occupational grading provided the skeletal framework that was filled out to cover all occupations practised in Australia at that time; additional occupations were fitted into the interstices of the ranks of the surveyed occupations.

Researchers using the Congalton scale have generally preferred the 7-point measure but a four- category rating (A,B,C,D) of occupational status was also produced from the original data.

those produced by the 1947 and 1963 NORC studies in U.S.A.6 They categorised the 342 occupations listed for the 1961 Australian census using their composite Australian-American scale.

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The resultant 16-point scale could be collapsed into 6 ranks: professionals and graziers and large farmers; managers, self-employed shop proprietors and other farmers; clerical workers, members of armed services and police; craftsmen and foremen; shop assistants, operatives, process workers, drivers; personal, domestic and service workers and miners; farm and rural workers and labourers. This scale was used for the early phases of the ANU social mobility study.

In 1977 Broom and Jones published the ANU 2 occupational prestige scale, based on research undertaken in 1975-1976.’ They drew up four sets of occupational titles to give their raters one set of 50 occupations for rating. These tasks were sent to randomly selected lawyers, medical practitioners, school teachers and social workers (750 subjects in each group). The overall response, 55%, drew a sample of 1,668 composed of 35% social workers, 3Wo teachers, 20% doctors and 15% lawyers. Some titles were omitted as being unsatisfactory and the remaining 191 occupations were ranged into 9 categories.

Then a regression analysis was conducted to relate these assesments to the census data, available and deemed relevant, concerning the incumbents of these occupations. The census variables used were sex, age, birthplace and parents’ birthplace, length of schooling, qualifications, housing style, availability of private kitchen and bathroom, and number of cars owned. In measurement exercises the researcher is often heavily influenced by what quantified data are available. Regression analysis was used to detect how much status may be related back to these variables. From these calculations emerged an equation of prestige to some 44 census variables held to predict occupational prestige. Using these variables, duly weighted, the equation fitted the 1971 ABS list of occupations to the prestige ranking. Approximately 420 job titles are ranked.

The development of the scale relies heavily:

(a) on the ratings by the original professional groups (approximately 442 respondents would have assessed the prestige of each occupation) and

(b) on the reliability of Census reports of income and education and those variables assumed to be indicative of social standing.

The resultant scale is clearly very useful but displays some awkward conglomerated

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occupational groups and some inconsistencies. For example, all officers in the RAAF share a common prestige rating and precede all army officers who precede navy officers; independent medical practitioners have highest prestige and, with industrial efficiency engineers and dentists, head the prestige scale with judges and lawyers below them; carpenters are equivalent in status to station hands/ shed hands; truck drivers have same status as tellers, cashiers and book-keepers; farm workers share the same prestige as plumbers or motor mechanics. However, these seeming inadequacies are usually smoothed away when the finely graded scale (it runs from high 915 down to 331) is re-ordered into categories. Broom and Jones created the scale to use in their extensive study of social mobility, or status attainment as it is more recently described, in Australia. The detailed measure lists the occupational titles of the 1971 Census, approximately 420 occupational groups. For their own work, Broom and Jones use the finely graded scale, but report mobility in terms of the larger categories: they distinguish ‘Professional’, ‘Managerial’, ‘White Collar’, ‘Skilled‘, ‘Semi-skilled’, ‘Unskilled’, ‘Farmers’, ‘Farm workers’ for describing upward and downward mobility.

A Recent Measure of Occupational Prestige The most recent published occupational

prestige scale endeavours to cover occupations currently practised and to represent contemporary assessment of occupational prestige drawn from distinctly different sections of the population.8 A list of 162 occupations was submitted to participants for rating on a 1-7 scale. The median scores ranged from 1.2 to 6.9 and may be summed into 6 ordinal categories. The rating task was completed by 2,173 respondents from diverse sections of the workforce. The approach was largely through institutions. Trade unions, management associations, public service organisations, firms in the steel industry, in finance, the Commonwealth Bank and A.M.P. insurance co-operated to allow a wide range of views of occupational prestige. To these responses were added assessments by managing directors of major companies, by a random sample following in the style of Congalton’s earlier ‘man in the street’ Sydney survey and by participants from two small country towns. In practice this strategy entailed 17 surveys of sectional groups in the workforce chosen to maximise the probability of finding divergent perspectives. Samples were drawn randomly, the selection frequently being done by the institutions participating.

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The Daniel study deliberately sought out variability but there remained a marked agreement on the relative status of occupations. Response rate was a satisfactory 78% yielding 2,173 participants, but this too varied: workers in industry 92%; trade union delegates 66% and 75%; managing directors 76%; Commonwealth Bank staff 88%; A.M.P. staff 90%; N.S.W. publicservice 79%; Commonwealth public servants 56Y~ clerical unionists 45%; finance company staff 91%. All sections were broadly agreed on the prestige order.

A separate study replicated this work and sought the participation of students in tertiary institutions. Student assessments were similar to those of workforce respondents, but only workforce judgements were used for the final prestige scale.

The prestige scale based on the ratings of these I62 occupations provided the basic measure to which were fitted occupations currently practised in Australia. Identification of occupations and detailed descriptions of conditions, pay rates, qualifications required, responsibility and authority entailed were gleaned from many sources. Over 1,000 occupations are rated. This work was greatly facilitated by access to the recently compiled Australian S tandard Classification of Occupations9 and by informal consultations with officers of trade unions and professional associations.

A Comparative Evaluation of the Occupational Prestige Scales

The prestige of occupations described in each scale appears as a fairly robust construct, but there are some significant differences of detail from one xale to another. These may be traced to:

the historical changes in prestige apparent at the time each study was undetaken;

the different perspectives provided by the quite different sampling frameworks used;

the inevitable ‘errors’ associated with sampling from a very large and heterogeneous Australian population;

in addition, the ANU 2 scale drew heavily on income, education and housing data provided by 1971 Census, pulling that measure away from the findings of both Congalton and Daniel.

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For the user, occupations in the Congalton and Daniel scales are presented in alphabetical order: Congalton assigns a 1-7 measure, Daniel gives a 1.0 - 7.0 score (actual range 1.2 - 6.9). Broom and Jones arrange their titles according to ABS numerical code (1971 version); the score ranges from 915 to 331. In its cultural and historical content the validity and reliability of each scale can be argued strongly but the precision of each measure should not be pushed too far.

Prestige of occupation in advanced industrial societies is a powerful indicator of social class and its concomitant advantage/disadvantage. But it is only an indicator. Some aspects of social advantage are not touched by occupational fac tors ; occupat iona l prestige is no t comprehensive, as illustrated by the way the most privileged and the most disadvantaged elude this measure. Occupational prestige measures are obfuscated when occupational descriptions are vague or ambiguous (researchers are familiar with the puzzle of assigning prestige to ‘public servant’, ‘manager’, ‘industry workers’). Occupational prestige has limited validity when extended to dependants not in the workforce and to the recipients of social security payments. There are strategies for minimizing these limitations.

Composite Measures and Alternate Indicators To use an indicator validly, it is wise to be

aware of its derivation. There have been many studies directed to discovering what criteria people use when they assess the prestige of an occupation. These are described in more detail elsewhere.10 Users of scales should note that raters bring a constellation of factors to bear on judging prestige. The relevance of education required, skill and knowledge involved, authority and autonomy allowed, income provided, working conditions experienced, associates found, security of tenure, are all endorsed. Accounts differ as to how much weight is attached to such factors but education, income and authority are foremost of the essentially subjective criteria nominated by raters.

Because of these factors inherent in the occupational prestige measure, the practice of creating a composite index that welds together such variables as occupational status, education and income appears to be hazardous, even invalid. This technique simply loads into the measure arbitrarily chosen variables that are already implicit in the occupational measure. A recently published Australian index of social class uses this approach. Brotherton, Kotler and Hammond”

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began with the ‘Index of Social Ranking’, a composite measure developed by Broom, Jones and associates in 1968; this composite measure assembled five variables, income, education and (where available) respondents self-rating of ‘social’ class and the interviewers rating of ‘economic’ class. The Melbourne team then used this early Broom and Jones construct to score for each young man in their sample a “Social class by family of origin (SCFO) full index”. This consisted of assigning each subject a score based on five presumably e q u a l c o m p o n e n t s : Father’s Occupation, Father’s Father’s Occupation, Mother’s Father’s Occupation, Father’s Education and Mother’s Education (mother’s occupation was assumed to be irrelevant). This fairly complex measure is riddled with practical difficulties, unsubstantiated assumptions and invalidities inevitable in adding qualitatively different variables. And it gratuitously adds in education to occupational variables where education is already implicit.

However, where occupational data are absent or defective, other indicators of prestige provide a useful substitute. For instance, educational a c h i e v e m e n t d o e s g ive a m e a s u r e of advantageldisadvantage, it correlates well with other indicators of social class12 Income data, although notoriously unreliable, can also spell out a measure of social advantageIdisadvantage. All else failing, the subject’s suburb can give some clues about social class (providing those subjects are located in one of the Australian capitals that has a current ‘social status of suburbs’ rating). It is important to remember, though, that these are weaker, less reliable indices of social class and should only be used to substitute for the more powerful predictor of occupational prestige.

Using Occupational Prestige Scales A number of strategies may be practised to

extend the utility of occupational measures. When planning a survey attention should be given to eliciting details about work-force participation. Where a person holds executive, administrative or supervisory position the size of the organisation is relevant. The Congalton, ANU 2 and Daniel scales make this distinction; Daniel’s research showed that holding such positions in a very small firm diminishes usual status by one grading ( 1 .O). Whether a person is an employee or employed is also relevant to prestige; Daniel’s research examined this aspect in some detail and ‘owning the business’ brings a n upgrading in prestige by one grade (e.g. electrician on wages is 4.5, in own

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business is a more prestigious 3.6). The size of the business is also relevant; respondents in that study judged the prestige of the owner of a ‘large business’ as 2.7, of a ‘small business’ as 3.9” These factors may be seen, even intuitively, to bear on social class.

Where information is inadequate greater difficulties are involved and interviewers must be instructed to probe if occupation is inadequately described. Sometimes additional information available may allow the occupational details to be amplified; for example, an ‘engineer’ who has a university degree is probably a ‘professional engineer’; recognising that most people prefer to enhance their own prestige, the simple term ‘manager’ should be interpreted as ‘manager, unspecified’ a t 3.9 rather than assuming senior, middle or junior status. Designations like ‘pensioner’, ‘student’, ‘housewife’ are rather intractable. These situations are outside the paid workforce and they d o not provide indications of class. A person retired from work and living on a pension might be asked about ‘last occupation’ or ‘main’ worklife ocupation. Without that information the researcher may select another indicator (such as education) or may create a nominal category with status unmeasured where ‘pensioner’ is the only information.

The status of student is closely tied to the occupation for which the student is studying but it is a matter of probability whether the student will attain that ocupational position. Where vocational studies are nominated (e.g. student teacher, law student) it seems appropriate to assign prestige one rank below that of the paid occupation. Alternatively, it is common practice to assign to students the status of parental occupation (the most favourable parental status) if it is known.

The impossibility of using the title ‘housewife’ to detect status has been discussed in detail elsewhere.14 Being a housewife conveys no specific status a t all. Like‘pensioner’, the housewife may be rated according to alternative information such as previous occupation or education. However, because families share the same status in society, the occupation of the main breadwinner of the family is a valid indication of its members’ social advantage/ disadvantage.

To some extent difficulties in assessing social class may be forestalled in the planning of research. Occupation provides the most powerful single indicator of social class. Where there is no information about occupation or the information is inadequate, other items may substitute as a measure. Where the collection of data is not

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controlled by the researcher it must be scrutinised cautiously in the light of the conditions under which it was collected. Measurement of social position, like all essays into measurement, is an intelligent exercise in ascertaining probability -in this case probable access to valued and potent social resources.

References

1. Such studies are legion, but the following might be cited as illustrative of this genre.

Leete, R. and Fox, A.J. The Registrar General's Social Classes: Origins and Uses, Population Trends, 1977, 8: 1-7. Rose, G. and Marmot, M.G. Social Class and Coronary Heart Disease, Br. Heart 8.

Kittagawa, E.M. and Hauser, P.M. Differential Mortality in the United States: A Study in Socioeconomic Epidemiology, Cambridge (Mass) Harvard University Press, 1973. Weber described social class in a short essay on status groups and classes. Max Weber: Economy and Society (Roth

California Press, Berkeley, 1978: 302-307. For a contemporary account of the history of a concept see J.S. Western, Class, Status

Western: Social Inequality in Australia, Macmillan, 1982. For a detailed discussion of the salience of

occupational prestige see: Daniel, Ann, Power, Privilege and Prestige: Occupations in Australia, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 1983:12-31.

4. Elley, W.B. and Irving, J.C. A Socio- economic Index for New Zeland Based on Levels of Education and Income, from the 1966 Census. New Zealand and Journal of Education Studies, 7,2: 153-167. The most comprehensive account of this work is given in Congalton A.A. Status and Power in Australia, Melbourne, Cheshire 1969.

6. Broom, L. Lancaster-Jones, F. and Zubrzvcki. J.. Social Stratification in

7.

Journal, 1981, 4513-19. 9.

2.

G and Wittich C eds.) University of 10.

and Party, Concepts and Definitions In J.S. 11.

3. occupation and the concomitant of 12.

5 . 13. 14.

. , Australia In Jackson J.A. ed. Social 81.

Stratification, Cambridge University Press, 1968:224. Broom, L., Duncan-Jones, P., Lancaster- Jones, F. and McDonnell, P. Investigating Social Mobility. Australian National University (Departmental Monograph no.

Daniel, Ann. op.cit. Department of Employment and Industrial Relations and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, ASCO Working Draft: Aus- tralian Standard Classif icat ion of Occupations, Canberra : Australian Government Publishing Service, 1981-1982. The first draft published in 1980-1981 describes in detail the salient characteristics of each occupation. Daniel, A.E. A Researcher's Reflection on the Blaikie Contribution, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 1978: 14,

Brotherton, P.C. Kotler, T. and Hammond, S.B. Development of an Australian Index of Social Class, Australian Psychologist 1979,

The relation between class and education continues to be demonstrated despite policies for equality of educational opportunity. cf. Connell, R. W., Ashenden, D.J., Kessler, S. and Dowsett, G. Making the Difference, Sydney, George Allen and Unwin, 1982, and Anderson, D.S. and Vervoorn, A.E. Access to Privilege: Patterns of Participation in Australian Post-Secondary Education, Canberra, ANU Press, 1983. Daniel, Ann. op. cit. 172 and 178. Daniel, A.E. It all depends on whose housewife she is: Sex, Work and Occupational Prestige, Australia and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 1979 15, 1:77-

I), 58-1 11.

1~81-87.

14, 1~77-82.

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