The Differences in an English and an American Rating of the Prestige of Occupations: A Reconsideration of Montague and Pustilnik's Study

Abstract

N 1954 MONTAGUE AND PUSTILNIK reported the result of a social grading in Spokane, an American city, of the same occupations as those used by Hall and Jones.2 Their main interest was to test a number of features of the English study such as its correspondence with a standard classification of occupations, the consistency of the rankings in the middle range of occupations and the differences in rating by social level. Montague and Pustilnik in the course of their paper raised certain difficulties arising out of the difference in methods of study used. Firstly Hall and Jones had presented their findings in terms of a straight ranking of the occupations, but Montague and Pustilnik, like North and Hatt,3 had derived a 'prestige score' by assigning arbitrary weights to each of five prestige categories and applying these weights to the distribution of responses in these categories. Secondly Montague and Pustilnik noted that if arbitrary weights, e.g. Very High Prestige = I; High Prestige = 2; . . . Very Low Prestige = 5, are assigned to the prestige categories the assumption is made that the steps in the prestige from 'Very High' to 'High', for example, is the same as, say, from 'Low Prestige' to 'Very Low Prestige'. This assumption, Montague and Pustilnik hold, is not warranted. Montague and Pustilnik also raised the point that their sample included both males and females whereas the results reported in Hall and Jones's study were those for males alone. Lastly they raised the question of the equivalence of occupational titles in English and American settings. 166