Effects of Rank versus Category in Measuring Subjective Social Inequality

Jürgen H.P. Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik and Dagmar Krebs

In a postindustrial society with high levels of division of labor social differentiation occurs mainly in two ways: First, the subjective self-perception of the individual and second, an objective ascription of the individual's location in the status hierarchy.

In survey research the subjective perception of the individual's own location in the stratification system is either measured by a question confronting the respondent with categories of social stratification or by letting the person allocate him- or herself on an open ranking scale. In both instances, the researcher has no information about the criteria underlying the respondent's choice:

- With respect to the "categorical" measure the researcher assumes that the respondents understand the categories and are able to apply these categories to locate themselves in the stratification system.

- With respect to the open ranking it is implicitly assumed that status in society is identically perceived by each respondent, regardless of the respondent's own location within the status hierarchy.

The main topic of interest in this paper is to show

1. the differences between these two measures,

2. their relation to objective demographic data.

It is demonstrated first, that the choice of these methods influences the results, since respondents tend to assign themselves different positions on the ranking and on the categorical measure; second, that judgements on the ranking and categorical measure cannot be seen as equivalent indicators of subjective location within the society's social hierarchy because people locating themselves the middle category do not necessarily assign themselves a middle rank position but use the whole range of the ranking scale; third, that the choice of a category depends on the category label describing one social stratum. In contrast the choice of a rank position seems to indicate the relative social distance within the social reality being used by the respondent.