Scaling of social prestige by direct and indirect psychophysical methods

Abstract

The professional social prestige practiced by: Social Assistants, Biologists, Dentists, Nurses, Engineers, Pharmacists, Physicists, Physical Therapists, Phonoaudiologists, Physicians, Psychologists, Chemists, and Sociologists was scaled by psychophysical methods of pair comparisons (indirect) and the magnitude estimations (direct). The results showed: 1) both of the methods yield substantially different scaling; 2) the pair comparisons scale (proportion or z) is a logarithmic function of the magnitude estimations scale; 3) the pair of comparison scale (proportion or z) is a linear function of the logarithms of the magnitude estimations scale; and 4) a high correlation (rho = .95) between the degrees of prestige attributed to the professions obtained by both methods. With these results we can conclude that: 1) the continuous of social prestige (not metric) scaled by these two methods yield a relation similar to the obtained in the sensorial continuous (metric); and 2) the continuous of social prestige has the following characteristics: quantitative, prothetic and non-qualitative (metathetic).

Integración de mérito y prestigio ocupacional en juicios psicofísicos de equidad en estudiantes universitarios

“…En ese sentido, los datos obtenidos permiten identificar jerarquías en el prestigio de las ocupaciones presentadas a los participantes, siendo los médicos especialistas quienes ocupan un mayor prestigio en comparación con las demás ocupaciones. Este hallazgo es similar a lo encontrado por los estudios de prestigio ocupacional per se (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 2014;Faleiros-Sousa & Da Silva, 2004;The Harris Poll, 2014).…”

The prestige of the Doctor of Ministry among Roman Catholic priests, deacons, and directors of religious education

“…These reservations notwithstanding, different methods of measuring occupational prestige typically correlate reasonably well (Faleiros‐Sousa and Silva, 2004; Hardin and Birnbaum, 1990; Perloe, 1963; Reiss et al , 1961; Skvoretz et al , 1974; Wegener, 1992), which indicates that the construct has substance and psychological reality. Moreover, the need for prestige is related to the choice of occupations (Blanchard and Lichtenberg, 2003) and the average prestige of an occupation is associated with the job satisfaction of the incumbents in that occupation (Smith, 2007).…”