The 1947 Study

In 1947, NORC conducted the first study of public attitudes regarding the prestige of 90 selected occupations. This study, known as the North-Hatt study, is reported in C.C. North and Paul K. Hatt, "Jobs and occupations: A popular evaluation," in Logan Wilson and William Kolb, eds., Sociological Analysis (Harcourt, Brace, 1949). This article is a reprint of the same title that appeared in Opinion News, v. 9, no. 4, September, 1949.

The final report of the North-Hatt study appears as Albert J. Reiss, Jr., Occupations and social status (Free Press, 1961). This book also contains Otis Dudley Duncan's Socio-economic Index (SEI), which is tagged onto the complete 1950 list of occupations from the Bureau of the Census.

SEI scores were originally calculated by Otis Dudley Duncan based on NORC's 1947 North-Hatt prestige study and the 1950 U.S. Census. Duncan regressed prestige scores for 45 occupational titles on education and income to produce weights that would predict prestige. This algorithm was then used to calculate SEI scores for all occupational categories employed in the 1950 Census classification of occupations. Similar procedures have been used to produce SEI scores based on later NORC prestige studies and censuses.

The 1963 Replication

In 1963, the North-Hatt study was replicated to measure change over time; the 1963 study is reported in Robert W. Hodge, Paul M. Siegel and Peter H. Rossi, "Occupational prestige in the United States, 1925-1963," in Reinhard Bendix and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Class, status and power, 2nd ed. (Free Press, 1966), pp. 322-334. This article originally appeared in American Journal of Sociology , v. 70, no. 3 (November 1964).

The 1964/65 Studies

In 1964/65, several additional studies were done which expanded the number of occupations rated by respondents to include all titles in the 1960 Census. The major reporting of the 1964/65 studies is Paul M. Siegel's dissertation, "Prestige in the American occupational structure" (Chicago, 1971).

These prestige scores were assigned in the General Social Survey (GSS) to respondents' occupations listed in the 1970 Census Occupational Classification. A list of these prestige scores can be found in any edition of the General Social Survey codebook, or in the following books:

Hauser, Robert M., and Featherman, David L., The process of stratification: trends and analyses (New York: Academic Press, 1977).

Lin, Nan, Foundations of social research (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976).

The 1989 Study

In 1989 the GSS replicated and extended the earlier Hodge-Siegel-Rossi ratings of occupational prestige developed in the 1960's. The prestige module, available on the ICPSR website, was designed by the late Robert W. Hodge, Judith Treas and Keiko Nakao in consultation with Smith and Davis. Hodge died in February, 1989 during data collection. Analysis of the data and construction of the NORC/GSS Occupational Prestige Scale was carried out by Nakao and Treas. Their work was supported by the National Science Foundation.

Since different respondents rated different sub-sets of occupations, a total of approximately 740 occupations are rated in all. The occupational prestige module and the Occupational Prestige Scale are discussed in detail in GSS Methodological Reports No. 69, 70, and 74. The NORC/GSS Occupational Prestige scores for the 1980 Occupational Classification are given in the GSS Cumulative Codebook Appendix F.

Discussions of Occupational Prestige

Please consult the GSS Codebook for a bibliography on occupational prestige.

Publications

Discussion of the general issue of occupational prestige and social status measures may be found in the following titles:

Nakao, Keiko, "Occupations and Stratification: Issues of Measurement," Contemporary Sociology 21 (September, 1992), 658-662.

Nakao, Keiko and Treas, Judith, "Computing 1989 Prestige Scores," GSS Methodological Report No. 70 Chicago: NORC, 1990.

Nakao, Keiko and Treas, Judith, "The 1989 Socioeconomic Index of Occupations: Construction from the 1989 Occupational Prestige Scores," GSS Methodological Report No. 74. Chicago: NORC, May, 1992.

Nakao, Keiko and Treas, Judith, "Occupational Prestige in the United States Revisited: Twenty-Five Years of Stability and Change," Unpublished Report, December, 1989.

Nakao, Keiko and Treas, Judith, "Updating Occupational Prestige and Socioeconomic Scores: How the New Measures Measure Up," Unpublished Report, 1992.

Schaefer, Richard T. and Lamm, Robert, Sociology. 5th Ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994.

Simon, Lisa, "National Study Finds Researchers Are Highly Respected By the Public," The Scientist, 6 (February 3, 1992), 20.

Power, Mary g., ed., Measures of socioeconomic status: current issues (AAAS Selected Symposium 81) (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982).

Stevens, Gillian and Hoisington, Elizabeth, "Occupational prestige and the 1980 U.S. labor force," Social Science Research v. 16, no. 1 (March, 1987): 74-105.