1. University of Warwick, Department of Sociology, 2012/13 SO 201: SSAASS (Surveys and Statistics) (Richard Lampard) Operationalisation of Concepts (Week 11)

2. Class and health? Social (occupational) class Males (all) Females (if married, classified by husband’s occupation) Ratio M/F I (Professional)3.982.151.85 II (Intermediate)5.542.851.94 III N (Skilled non-manual)5.802.761.96 III M (Skilled manual)6.083.411.78 IV (Partly Skilled)7.964.271.87 V (Unskilled)9.885.311.86 Ratio V/I2.5 Table 2.1: Death rates by sex and social (occupational) class (15-64 years) Rates per 1000 population England and Wales 1971 Source: Occupational Mortality 1970-72 (Decennial supplement).

3. Operationalisation of Concepts Concepts → Indicators Validity? Reliability? Dimensions and sub-dimensions? Construction of (uni-dimensional?) indices Questions and coding

4. THEORYCONCEPTSSUB-CONCEPTS INDICATORSQUESTIONSDATA (+ CODING)

5. Choice of measures Availability? Comparability? Match conceptual focus? (Validity) Measuring ‘new’ concepts?

6. Getting intimate with Giddens! Giddens introduces two new concepts to encapsulate the key changes that he identifies (in his book The Transformation of Intimacy). The first is the idea of the pure relationship. By this he means: ‘a social relation is entered into for its own sake, for what can be derived by each person from a sustained association with another; and which is continued only in so far as it is thought by both parties to deliver enough satisfactions for each individual to stay within it.’ (Giddens, 1992: 58) The second concept is that of confluent love, which Giddens contrasts with the recent idea of romantic love. He states: ‘Confluent love is active, contingent love, and therefore jars with the ‘forever’, ‘one-and-only’ qualities of the romantic love complex.’ (Giddens, 1992: 61)

7. Operationalising class Objective or subjective class? Diversity of relevant dimensions Various existing schemata Categories or scale? Whose occupation(s)?

8. What’s class really all about? CLASS POSITION ? CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS ? CLASS ACTION ?

9. Two ways of evaluating class measures Theoretically:In terms of conceptual clarity Empirically:In terms of explanatory power (The former bears some relation to the notion of content validity and the latter to the notion of construct validity {see de Vaus, 1986}). Registrar General's Social Class is stronger in relation to the latter than the former, whereas Wright's class schema is stronger in relation to the former than the latter).