If you were doing your own study of status differences in your community, how wo
ID: 3471861 • Letter: I
Question
If you were doing your own study of status differences in your community, how would you measure people’s social class? Base your answer on the textbook’s discussion of these matters to explain why you would take the particular measurement approach you’re chosen. What would be it’s value(s) and shortcoming(s) compared with those of alternative measurements procedures? If you were doing your own study of status differences in your community, how would you measure people’s social class? Base your answer on the textbook’s discussion of these matters to explain why you would take the particular measurement approach you’re chosen. What would be it’s value(s) and shortcoming(s) compared with those of alternative measurements procedures?Explanation / Answer
Many people understand social class in different aspects. Many people measures social class from economic, cultural or political points of view while there are other measures of social class such as race, sexuality, education, disability or criminal record. However it is important to mention here that an individual falls into more than one category when it comes to measure social class and status. These categories often overlap one another.
There are three methods to measure social class. These methods are the subjective, reputational and objective methods.
Subjective Method is one in which people are asked to define their own social class. Though this approach is direct and simple it has numbers of flaws. Individuals may claim that everyone is eual or they may classify themselves according to their aspirations.
In the reputational method, people define others based on the behaviour they observe in other people. This method allows an understanding of how people in a community see major social divisions. Its use is limited to small communities where people know each other.
The objective requires the Researcher to rank Individuals according to objective criteria such as income, occupation and prestige.
These three methods of measuring a person's social class come from two different points of view. These points of view belong to the nominalists and the realists. In the nominalist view, a person’s social class is a matter of how other people perceive them. In the realist’s view, a person’s social class is a matter of how they behave and act.