INDICATORS OF SOCIAL-CLASS - A COMPARATIVE APPRAISAL OF MEASURES FOR USE IN EPIDEMIOLOGICAL-STUDIES
INDICATORS OF SOCIAL-CLASS - A COMPARATIVE APPRAISAL OF MEASURES FOR USE IN EPIDEMIOLOGICAL-STUDIES
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DOI：
10.1016/0277-9536(82)90267-2
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发表时间：
1982-01-01
影响因子：
5.4
通讯作者：
GOFIN, J
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
ABRAMSON, JH;GOFIN, R;GOFIN, J
在以色列耶路撒冷的一项社区健康调查中，比较了社会阶层的各种指标，以评估它们在发现与健康特征的联系方面的价值。测量了这些指标之间以及它们与选定的健康相关变量之间的相关性。结果表明，在流行病学研究中用作社会阶层一般指标的职业量表（改编自英国登记总量表、声望量表和社会经济地位量表）之间几乎没有什么可选择的，因为它们之间的相关性非常高，而且它们与健康变量的相关性模式非常相似。当使用不太详细的职业数据时，与某些健康变量的相关性变得较弱。社会阶层的其他指标（教育、家庭收入、家庭拥挤程度、权威评级和便利设施得分）与职业没有很强的相关性，它们与健康变量的关联也存在差异，这表明关于健康与社会阶层之间关系的结论对所使用的衡量标准并非不敏感。尽管存在差异，但职业等级、教育和收入与健康措施的关联模式大致相似，这表明，如果要使用单一措施，在这些主要指标之间可能出于某些目的几乎没有选择。这些不同社会阶层指标之间相当低的相关性表明，使用多个测量可能会有相当大的收益，从而增加与社会阶层的关联被发现的机会，允许对指标之间的独立影响和重要相互作用进行评估，并增加模型的整体解释或预测能力。指标的选择应根据实际考虑和所研究的健康特征的社会阶级关系的概念框架来决定。
Various indicators of social class were compared in a community health survey in Jerusalem, Israel to appraise their value in detecting associations with health characteristics. Correlations among the indicators and between them and selected health-relevant variables were measured. The results suggested that there was little to choose between the occupational scales tested (an adaptation of the British Registrar-General''s scale, a prestige scale, and a socio-economic status scale) for use as general indicators of social class in epidemiological studies, as the corrrelations between them were very high and the patterns of their correlations with the health variables were very similar. Correlations with some health variables became weaker when less detailed occupational data were used. Other indicators of social class (education, family income, household crowding, an authority rating and an amenities score) were not strongly correlated with occupation, and there were differences in their associations with the health variables, indicating that conclusions about the relationship between health and social class are not insensitive to the measure used. Despite the discrepancies, the patterns of associations with the health measures were broadly similar for occupational scales, education and income, suggesting that if a single measure is to be used there may for some purposes be little to choose between these major indicators. The fairly low correlations among these different indicators of social class suggest that there may be considerable gains from using more than 1 measure, so as to increase the chance that an association with social class will be detected, to permit appraisal of independent effects and important interactions between indicators, and to increase the overall explanatory or predictive power of the model. The choice of indicators should be determined by practical considerations and by the conceptual framework with respect to the social-class relationships of the health characteristics under study.