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Tim,

Make sure you know if you what you want to measure is parental/household income or socioeconomic status. 

For SES, you can use Duncan's Socioeconomic Index, which is measured in terms of occupations, in your case parental occupations.  It is three major categories (1) service occupations, (2) administrative support occupations, including clerical and (3) executive, administrative and managerial occupations.

Duncan, O. D. (1961). A socioeconomic index for all occupations. In J., Reiss, Jr., (Ed.). Occupations and social status (pp. 109–138). New York: Free Press of Glencoe.

Because this is a common measure in sociology and demography, you can look at how the census measures it or how other large data sets have measured it.

I suspect that income is hard to measure indirectly since what people own or where they live may depend on their access to credit or transfers, subsidies, etc.

Dr. Laura Guerrero

Assistant Professor of Management

Marketing & Management Department

College of Business Administration

University of Texas at El Paso

500 W. University Avenue

El Paso, TX 79968-0539

915-747-5014

lguerrero5@utep.edu

Hello,

I am trying to come up with survey items appropriate for high school age subjects that act as a proxy for parent/household income. Examples might include: "How many bedrooms are in your home?" or "How many cars does your family have?" I would appreciate any suggestions or examples of questions(with references if possible) you have found to be effective. Thanks.

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Hi Tim;

Why not just ask them for their zip code / postal code? You can then find out the average household income for that area from the census. This is fairly standard practice in economics.

-Catherine

Hello,

I am trying to come up with survey items appropriate for high school age subjects that act as a proxy for parent/household income. Examples might include: "How many bedrooms are in your home?" or "How many cars does your family have?" I would appreciate any suggestions or examples of questions(with references if possible) you have found to be effective. Thanks.

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Hi Tim,

If you can answer your question using SES, you might take a look at an in press Psych Review on the subject:

Kraus, M. W., Piff, P. K, Mendoza-Denton, R., Rheinschmidt, M. L., & Keltner, D. (2012). Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: How the rich are different from the poor, Psychological Review, 119, 546-572.

(It can be downloaded from the first author's website: http://www.krauslab.com/papers.html)

Many studies cited there use a "ladder measure" of subjective SES, The MacArthur Scale of Subjective Socioeconomic Status. Participants rate themselves compared with others as being on one of 10 rungs of a ladder. It's well validated, and widely used:

Adler, N. E., Epel, E. S., Castellazzo, G., & Ickovics, J. R. (2000). Relationship of subjective and objective social status with psychological and physiological functioning: Preliminary data in healthy, White women. Health Psychology, 19, 586 –592. doi:10.1037/0278-6133.19.6.586

The advantage of this measure for your sample is that it does not require participants having an in-depth knowledge about their material circumstances (or those of their parents)

There are likely many other possible measures contained in that article as well.

Best of luck,

Geordie

Tim,

Make sure you know if you what you want to measure is parental/household income or socioeconomic status. 

For SES, you can use Duncan's Socioeconomic Index, which is measured in terms of occupations, in your case parental occupations.  It is three major categories (1) service occupations, (2) administrative support occupations, including clerical and (3) executive, administrative and managerial occupations.

Duncan, O. D. (1961). A socioeconomic index for all occupations. In J., Reiss, Jr., (Ed.). Occupations and social status (pp. 109–138). New York: Free Press of Glencoe.

Because this is a common measure in sociology and demography, you can look at how the census measures it or how other large data sets have measured it.

I suspect that income is hard to measure indirectly since what people own or where they live may depend on their access to credit or transfers, subsidies, etc.

Dr. Laura Guerrero

Assistant Professor of Management

Marketing & Management Department

College of Business Administration

University of Texas at El Paso

500 W. University Avenue

El Paso, TX 79968-0539

915-747-5014

lguerrero5@utep.edu

Hello,

I am trying to come up with survey items appropriate for high school age subjects that act as a proxy for parent/household income. Examples might include: "How many bedrooms are in your home?" or "How many cars does your family have?" I would appreciate any suggestions or examples of questions(with references if possible) you have found to be effective. Thanks.

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