Social Grading of Occupations

Abstract

Larticle lournit les premiers r6sultats d'une tentative faite pour rep6ter au Canada une etude americaine SUP le prestige prof essionnel. On y discute d'abord ds la methodologie utilisee et des moyens disponibles pour la poursuite d'enquetes sociales au Canada. On y pr6sente ensuite les valeurs attribuees, quant a u prcstigc ciiacun a 204 emplois dans l'ensemble de l'echantillon canadien et, sbparement, les r6sultats B partir dcs interviews obtenues en anglais et en francais. On ohlient un coefficient de corr6lation trPs 6lev6 entre les rPsuItats de cette recherche et, d'une part, l'etude recente faite aux U.S.A., puis, d'autre part, des recherches anterieures au pays. Les Canadiens attribuent un prestige plus elev6 que les Americains A la plupart des emplois. Les evaluations des francophones diffPrent quelque peu cepwdant, ceci 6tant sans doute dfi en partie ti la traduction des vocables professionnels. Les francophones contribuent moins que les anglophones, par ailleurs, aux evaluations extremes. Les donnees recueillies permettent de se demander si le recensement canadien fait une classification des emplois qui soit adPquate pour Ctre utilisee comme indice de statut socioCconomique. I1 appert qu'une classification des occupations qui proviendrait de recherches sociologiques serait plus adequate dans ce but.Interest in the public evaluation or social ranking of occupations stems from the theory of social stratification, and from the need for a standardized indicator of social class or measure of socio-economic status. A subsidiary interest has been the need in industrial societies to recruit specialized manpower.This manpower interest has meant that occupational ranking has often been done by special and restricted populations, such as school children or college students. It has also meant that the occupations to be ranked were over-weighted with high-prestige and professional m u p ations. These two facts raise questions about the relevance for general stratification analysis of the occupational prestige data so far available.Exceptions are the few instances where occupations have been ranked by national samples. The first of these was the 1947 ranking of 88 occupations, by the National Opinion Research Centre (NORC) , employing old quota sampling techniques and based on a national sample of adults and youths. One of its major findings was that with small variation between the major sub-groupings there was a remarkable consistency in the prestige of occupations, enough to indicate a general ranking consensus for the society. Since 1947 there have been many studies of occupational ranking in both industrialized and developing countries, but only two of these, by Svalastogal in Denmark and Carlsson2 in Sweden, were truly national studies. Others have been extremely limited. For example, in the Hall-Jones study in the United Kingdom the rankers came mainly from the membership of white collar trade unions.3 Thus despite the fact that there have been many studies of occupational prestige only a few can be considered...

Um modelo de análise sócio-econômica: construção e resultados obtidos

“…Esta escala tem sido empregada na Inglaterra 6 , sendo também aplicada primeiramente no Brasil, em São Paulo por Hutchinson 8 e, posteriormente, por outros através do Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Educacionais l, 5 .…”

The Meaning and Measurement of Occupational Prestige1

“…until very recently (Goldthorpe andHope, 1972 and1974), of the concept of prestige itself. The theory and restrch has been constrained by a dominant absolutist paradigm, and a few studies, by North and Hatt ( 1947) and Duncan (1961) in the U.S., and Hall and Jones (1950) in Britain, have been used as exemplars for much of the research. Under the prevailing influence of structural-functionalism, particularly during the 1950's and early-1960's, researchers have sought to demonstrate consensus of judgments in their various samples, and on the basis of a wide variety of studies in many parts of the world (Inkeles and Rossi, 1956;Hodge, Treiman and Rossi, 1966), some have argued that occupational prestige is sociology's 'great empirical invariant' (Marsh, 1971;Featherman et al, 1975: 331).…”

The question‐answer exchange between mothers and young children

“…All MC children were in classes 1, 2 or 3 of the Hall-Jones scale (Hall and Caradog-Jones, 1950); the mean IQ for the boys was 100.7, for the girls 100.0. Mean ages *ere 6.0 and 6.3 respectively.…”