Scaling Social Status in Western Germany

tN ADDING yet another instrument to the existing measures of | social stratification we tried to construct a scale which had a conXceptual meaning, and was at the same time operationally defined to be useful in survey research. This seemed to be especially necessary in Brestern Germany, where the lack of any true social status scale made it necessary in survey research to revert to such attributes as occupaiion or income, when it was really the factor 'stratification' one intended to use. To employ with only some minor modifications one of the scales developed in the U.S.A. did not seem advisable, since these instruments appear often to lack a conceptual meaning beyond the mere operational definition or are too strongly tied to a specific culture context,l thus rendering their translation into a different environment problematic. It was with this in mind that the 'Soziologische Abteilung des Forschungsinstitutes fur Sozialund Verwaltungssvissenschaften' at the University of Cologne attempted to develop a social status scale during a survey on family and leisure-time activities.2

Geometry · Scaling · Mathematics · Sociology and Education Studies

• Kulturelle Dimensionen der sozialen Schichtung

  M Rainer Lepsius•Interessen, Ideen und Institutionen•1990

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