Question

If you were doing your own study of status differences in your community, how would you measure people’s social class? Explain why you would take the particular measurement approach you’ve chosen. What would be its value(s) and shortcoming(s) compared with those of alternative measurement procedures?

Answer 1

If I were to design my own study of status differences in my community, I would choose to measure people’s social class by studying the family’s annual income. This is because understanding the education or the mere standard of living (such as by evaluating the socioeconomic level of locale) could give a vague idea of SES. However, in order to study class differences, annual income can give a comprehensive idea into how the family would design its expenses & run their livelihood. The value of adopting such a method could be that studying one variable in connection to the status differences within community would make the study easier to conduct. Shortcoming however could be the fact that social desirability & masking may impact. People may be likely to lie about their annual incomes.