Oakes J Michael, Rossi Peter H
Division of Epidemiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55454-1015, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2003 Feb;56(4):769-84. doi: 10.1016/s0277-9536(02)00073-4.
The resurgence of social epidemiology has yet to induce corresponding research into basic measurement issues. This paper aims to motivate investigators to refocus attention on the measurement of socioeconomic status (SES). With a primarily American focus, we document striking paucity of basic research in SES, review the history of SES measurement, highlight the central limitations of current measurement approaches, sketch a new theoretical perspective, present new pilot results, and outline areas for future research. We argue (1) that lack of conceptual clarity and the bypassing of standard psychometric techniques have retarded SES measurement. And (2) social epidemiologists should revisit the measurement of SES and consider whether a richer, psychometrically induced, approach would be more useful. Our pilot study suggests a great deal of uniformity between existing SES measures and that a new approach may be worthy of pursuit.
社会流行病学的复兴尚未引发对基本测量问题的相应研究。本文旨在促使研究人员重新将注意力集中在社会经济地位（SES）的测量上。主要以美国为重点，我们记录了SES基础研究的显著匮乏，回顾了SES测量的历史，突出了当前测量方法的核心局限性，勾勒了一个新的理论视角，展示了新的试点结果，并概述了未来研究的领域。我们认为：（1）概念清晰度的缺乏以及对标准心理测量技术的忽视阻碍了SES测量。（2）社会流行病学家应该重新审视SES的测量，并考虑一种更丰富、由心理测量学引导的方法是否会更有用。我们的试点研究表明，现有SES测量方法之间存在很大的一致性，并且一种新方法可能值得探索。
