Studying Socioeconomic Status: Conceptual Problems and an Alternative Path Forward.

ABSTRACT: Socioeconomic status (SES; or social class) is considered an important determinant of psychological and life outcomes. Despite this importance, how to appropriately conceive of and measure it remains unsettled. In this article, I argue that SES is, under conventional conceptions of the construct, an unmeasurable construct and present an alternative strategy for studying socioeconomic conditions. I make this argument using several lines of analysis. First, a literature review of 20 years of psychological research on SES reveals that psychologists rarely define SES theoretically (79.6% of articles did not) but call a great number of operationalizations measures of SES (147 in total). Second, current recommendations for studying SES permit contradictory predictions, rendering the recommendati

SUBMITTER: Antonoplis S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10018062 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature