Measuring Subjective Social Status: A Case Study of Older Taiwanese
Measuring Subjective Social Status: A Case Study of Older Taiwanese
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DOI：
10.1007/s10823-006-9020-4
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发表时间：
2006-03-01
影响因子：
2
通讯作者：
Chang, Ming-Cheng
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Goldman, Noreen;Cornman, Jennifer C.;Chang, Ming-Cheng
尽管社会地位的衡量标准已被广泛使用，人们对社会地位与健康之间的关系也越来越感兴趣，但用于表示社会地位的变量往往不适合用于老年人口。本文考察了人们对最近发展起来的主观社会地位测量的反应，即麦克阿瑟主观社会地位量表。该工具要求受访者使用梯子上的十个梯级来定位自己在其国家中与其他人的社会经济地位，并分别在其社区中进行定位。这些问题被纳入了最近一项针对台湾中老年的全国性调查。分析的目的是更好地了解这种主观评估是如何形成的（即，探索社会、经济和文化因素在确定社会等级中的地位方面的作用），并评估阶梯工具在社会科学和卫生研究中的潜在效用。本文将台湾的结果与西方人口社会地位的主观测量结果进行比较。研究结果支持使用麦克阿瑟主观社会地位量表来衡量老年人的主观社会地位，并建议使用该量表可以进一步了解健康方面的社会梯度。
Despite widespread use of measures of social status and increasing interest in the relationship between social status and health, the variables used to denote social status are often inappropriate for use with older populations. This article examines responses to a recently developed measure of subjective social position, known as the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status. The instrument asks respondents to use ten rungs of a ladder to position themselves socioeconomically relative to other people in their country and, separately, in their community. These questions were incorporated into a recent national survey of middle-aged and older adults in Taiwan. The objectives of the analysis were to gain a better understanding of how such subjective assessments are formed (i.e., to explore the contribution of social, economic, and cultural factors in the determination of position within a social hierarchy) and to assess the potential utility of the ladder instrument in social science and health research. This article compares results from Taiwan with those derived from subjective measures of social status in Western populations. The findings support use of the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status as a measure of subjective social status among the older population and suggest that using it may provide further insights into the social gradient in health.