Lecture 7

Question 1

Explain social class

Answer 1

-> Society is made up of a hierarchy of distinct social classes
-> Members of each social class have relatively equal status
-> Members of different social classes have more/less status
->Social classes are often measured in terms of social status
-> Usually defined by one or more of the following:
 Family income
 Occupational status
 Educational attainment

Question 2

Explain the subjective and objective measures for measuring social class

Answer 2

Subjective measures => asking individuals to estimate which social class they belong to

• Resulting classification of social class membership is based on the participants self-perceptions or self-images
• > Treated as a personal phenomenon one that reflects an individuals sense of belonging or identification with others (class consciousness)
• Advantages
• > Easy to collect
• > Assess an individuals class consciousness
• Disadvantages
• > Based on self-perception and self-image
• > Tends to result in lots of people classifying themselves as ‘middle class’

Reputational => asking certain members in a community to judge the social class of others in that community eg. ranking people of different occupations

• Advantages
• > Can capture occupational prestige within a comunity
• Disadvantages
• > Has limited ability to predict/explain purchase and consumption behaviours

Objective measures => consists of selected demographic or socioeconomic variables concerning the individuals of the study

• Measured through questionnaires that ask respondants to answer several factual questions about themselves, their families or place of residence
• Can be used to reach or target a desired market segment
• > Occupational => based on demographic and/or socioeconomic variables
• Single variable measures based on one variable (eg. occupation, education, income)
• Composite variable measures combine 2+ variables eg. Index of Status Characteristics