Abstract
In many national and international studies it could be shown that the rank orders of prestige of comparable occupations remained the same even with different sampling methods (Inkeles & Rossi, 1956). Occasionally, the attempt has been made to trace the occupational prestige back to more special aspects of the evaluated occupations (Rossi & Inkeles, 1957). This investigtion is a replication of the occupational prestige study with American students by Gusfield and Schwara (1963). German vocarional school boys (n = 133), aged 16 to 18 and atrending a continuation school extending over 3 yr., and 120 male students of the University of Cologne, aged 20 to 24, judged 34 occupations on a five-point scale with regard to their general prestige. Three weeks later 15 of the evaluated occupations were rated by the same Ss on a 24-item semantic differenrial according to the Gusfield and Schwartz procedure. The rank orders of prestige of the 15 occupations corresponded almost completely for the three samples: German students vs American students rho = 0.93 (p < .001); German students vs German vocational school-boys rho = 0.97 (p < ,001); American students vs German vocational school-boys rho = 0.96 (p < ,001 ) . On judging the 15 occupations by means of the semantic differential it was shown that 14 of the 24 dimensions had significant correlations with occupational prestige for vocational schoolboys and students. Seventeen of the 24 items applied were comparable with those utilized in the Gusfield and Schwartz study. Only 5 of these 17 items correlated significantly for all comparable samples (p < .05; rho between 0.67 and 0.94). These dimensions were middle class-working class (Mittelstand-Arbeiterstand), rich-poor (reicharm) , successful-unsuccessful (erfolgreich-nicht erfolgreich) , clean--dirry (saubet--schmutzig) , soberdrunk (nuechtern-vertraeumt) . The other 12 items showed no significant agreement for all three samples. American students relate, e.g., active-passive to presrige (rho = 0.70, p < .05), whereas German vocational school-boys do not (rho = 0.19 for aktiv~assiv). Possibly the meaning of the words aktiv and passiv was not understood correctly by the vocarional schoolboys because for them they had the character of foreign words. German students judge occupations with high presrlgc, e.g., rather sachlich (rho = 0.74, p < .05) than persoenlich as American smdents do for thing oriented--people oriented (do = 0.18). We assume that thing-oriented behavior is attributed a higher social value in Germany than in America. These differences do not only result from comparing samples of different mothertongues. The two German experimental groups also formed almost identical rank-orders of prestige; however, they attributed different connotations to occupations and their prestige.
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