Occupational prestige

Occupational prestige (also known as job prestige) refers to the consensual nature of rating a job based on the collective belief of its worthiness.

History

People rate the ‘general standing’ of an occupation (the most common question) is taken to be a measure of occupational prestige and hence of the social status of occupations, though many other criteria have been proposed, including ‘social usefulness’ as well as ‘prestige’ and ‘status’ themselves. In order to obtain the scale of occupations (which is invariably taken to be national in application), respondents' ratings are aggregated, typically by taking either the average or, as in the classic American study by C. C. North and P. K. Hatt in 1947 (‘Jobs and Occupations) Job prestige did not become a fully developed concept until 1947 when the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), under the leadership of Cecil C. North^[1], conducted a survey which held questions regarding age, education, and income in regard to the prestige of certain jobs. This was the first time job prestige had ever been researched, measured, and taught. Duncan's Socioeconomic Index (DSI) ^[2] became one of the most important outcomes of this survey, as it gave various occupational categories different scores based on the surveys results as well as the result of the 1950 Census of Population. During the 1960s the NORC did a second generation of surveys which became the basis for the socioeconomic status score until the 1980s as well as the foundation for Trieman's International Prestige Scale in 1977. Out of these surveys and research job prestige has been defined in various ways. Some definitions include:

• The consensual nature of rating a job based on the collective belief of its worthiness.
• Prestige is the measurement of the "desirability" of an occupation in terms of socioeconomic rewards.
• Prestige reflects factual, scientific knowledge about the material rewards attached to certain occupations.

Different people seem to weight these issues differently in their understanding of prestige. Most people seem to implicitly view prestige as a weighted average of income and education and this is the operational definition used in indices like DSI and ISEI. However other people (especially in the working class) seem to have more moralized notions of how much a job helps society and would, for instance, rate doctors high and lawyers low even though both jobs require postgraduate degrees and earn high incomes.^[3][4]

The indicators most commonly used to measure SES come from Duncan's (1961) Socioeconomic Index (SEI), a composite of occupational prestige, income, and education. Duncan used data from North and Hart's study of 1949 occupational prestige and census data ^[1] to conduct the first correlational study of the statistical relationship between education, income, and occupation. Duncan focused on White males with at least a high school education and income of $3,500 dollars or more in 1949, and found correlations among income, public-ranking of occupational prestige, and educational level of around 0.75. The study did not report whether the index included a sample of ethnic minorities ^[5]).

The SEI model continues to influence the way researchers measure SES. The National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS:88, NCES, 1988) initially employed a measure of SES developed by Stevens and Featherman (1981) based on father's income, mother's income, father's education, mother's education, and father's and mother's occupation as rated by the SEI model. In the first-year follow-up study, the National Center for Education Statistics (1990) used the Nakao and Treas (1994) revised SEI model. ^[6]

Calculating Occupational Prestige in America

During the 1960s through the 1980s job prestige was calculated in a variety of different ways. People were given index cards with about 100 or so jobs listed on them and had to rank them from most to least prestigious. This ranking system was known as placing jobs in a "ladder of social standing." Another method they used in this time period was to have the respondents rank jobs on a "horizontal ruler" using specific guidelines such as estimated income, freedom of choice, and how interesting the job was. No matter what the method the outcomes were generally the same^{[citation needed]}.

A 2007 Harris Poll with of 1,010 U.S. adults suggested that occupational prestige is linked to perceived impact on welfare; the highest ranking jobs being firefighter, scientists, and teachers ^[7]. Lower ranking jobs include well-paid positions such as brokers, actors and bankers. Police officers and Engineers tended to fall somewhere in the middle of the ladder.According to The Harris Poll (2007), the following are the changes over the last quarter century of American's view as the most and least prestigious jobs:

• Those who see teachers as having "very great" prestige has risen 25 points from 29 to 54 percent;
• Those who say lawyers have "very great" prestige has fallen 14 points, from 36 to 22 percent;
• Scientists have fallen 12 points from 66 to 54 percent;
• Athletes have fallen ten points from 26 to 16 percent;
• Physicians have fallen nine points from 61 to 52 percent;
• Bankers have fallen seven points from 17 to 10 percent;
• Entertainers have fallen six points from 18 percent to 12 percent.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} North, C., & Hart, P. K. (1949). Jobs and Occupations: A popular evaluation. Opinion News, 9, 313.
2. ^ Duncan, O. D. (1961). A Socioeconomic Index for all Occupations. In J. Reiss, Jr. (Ed.), Occupations and Social Status (pp. 109–138). New York: Free Press of Glencoe
3. ^ Donald J. Treiman. (1977). Occupational Prestige in Comparative Perspective. New York: Academic Press.
4. ^ Michael Young and Peter Willmott (1956). Social Grading by Manual Workers. British Journal of Sociology: 7: 337–345.
5. ^ Easton-Brooks, D. & Davis, A. (2007). Wealth, Traditional Socioeconomic Indicators, and The Achievement Debt. The Journal of Negro Education. Washington: Fall 2007. 76 (4); 530–542.
6. ^ Nakao, K., & Treas, J. (1994). Updating Occupational Prestige and Socioeconomic Scores: How the new measures measure up. Sociological Methodology, 24, 1–72.
7. ^ The Harris Poll #77, August 1 (2007). "Firefighters, Scientists And Teachers Top List As Most Prestigious Occupations; According To Latest Harris Poll:Bankers, Actors And Real Estate Agents Are At The Bottom Of The List"

• Stevens, G, & Featherman, D. L. (1981). A Revised Socioeconomic Index of Occupational Status. Social Science Research, 10, 364–395.

• Klaczynski, Paul A. "Sociocultural Myths and Occupational Attainment: Educational Influences on Adolescents' Perceptions of Social Status." Youth and Society, 1991, 22, 4, June, 448–467.

• "In U.S., Women's Weight Gain Brings Loss of Income, Job Prestige, Study Finds." Health & Medicine Weekly, 2005, June. Retrieved March 9, 2006, from NewRx database.

• Schooler, C., & Schoenbach, C. (1994, September). "Social Class, Occupational Status, Occupational Self-Direction, and Job Income: A Cross-National Examination. Sociological Forum." Academic Search Premier database, 1994, September 431–459.

• Ollivier. "Too much money off other people's backs': status in late modern societies". The Canadian journal of sociology. 2000 vol:25 iss:4 pg:441 -470.

External links

• http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=25198&nfid=mnf
• http://www.jaymorrissey.com/2008/01/02/the-stigma-of-occupational-prestige/
• http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=793