Measurement of Occupational Status in Contemporary Japan

这个项目探索了衡量当代日本社会社会地位的方法。在社会科学研究中，职业声望最常被用来表示个人(即在职人员)的地位。然而，有一个问题是，这种衡量办法的有效性如何，因为声望评价是根据仅以单一属性区分的各种职称进行的，即主要表明所涉任务的职业类别。职业的其他特征也会影响人们对职业地位的认知，特别是在日本，例如从事职业的行业，以及在职人员受雇的公司规模。该项目采用了析因设计的调查，要求受访者对包含公司规模、行业和任务的职业名称进行评级。研究结果证实，职业声望评价受上述三个因素的影响。此外，行业和职业类别对职业地位存在交互作用。在此基础上，基于职业特征的多个维度(即行业、企业规模和任务)构建了一个新的声望量表。

This project explores ways in which social status is measured in contemporary Japanese Society. Occupational prestige has most frequently been used to indicate the status of an individual (i.e., the incumbent) in social science research. There is a question, however, as to how valid such a measure may be, since the prestige evaluation is elicited on various occupational titles differentiated solely by a single attribute, i.e., occupational category primarily indicating the tasks involved. There are other features of occupations that affect the perceived status of an occupation, especially in Japan, such as the industry in which the occupation is performed, as well as the firm size in which the incumbent is employed. This project employed a survey with a factorial design, asking respondents to rate occupational names incorporating firm size, industry, as well as task. The results confirmed that prestige evaluation of occupations is dependent on all of the three factors mentioned above. In addition, there was an interaction effect between industry and occupational category on the occupational status. Based on these results, a new prestige scale was constructed based on multiple dimensions (i.e., industry, firm size, and task) of occupational characteristics.