Abstract
HIS PAPER presents the results of an experiment to answer two questions: I. What is the degree of agreement in commonsense judgments of socioeconomic status of the population of a community by two persons who are themselves of radically different socioeconomic status, that is, how are informal ratings of socioeconomic status influenced by the socioeconomic status of the rater?; 2. What is the degree of correspondence of both of these judgments with the results secured for the same population by means of the Chapin Social Status Scale, I933.1 In addition to the answers to these questions, the results are evaluated from two points of view: I. is the conformity of the results of a standardized scale to commonsense judgments an important test of the validity or usefulness of the scale?; 2. is it necessary or possible to describe what a scale measures except in terms of the scale itself? A New England village of about 300 families was the field of the experiment. Two hundred nineteen homes were scored by means of the Chapin scale. A local banker of this community, a resident for forty years, and a local janitor, a resident for forty-five years, were asked to rate the same population on a six-point scale, with the following instructions.
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