Galvan Manuel J, Payne B Keith, Hannay Jason, Georgeson Alexis R, Muscatell Keely A
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
University of South Carolina Upstate, Spartanburg, South Carolina, USA.
Ann Behav Med. 2023 Oct 16;57(11):929-941. doi: 10.1093/abm/kaad054.
Subjective socioeconomic status is robustly associated with many measures of health and well-being. The MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status (i.e., the MacArthur ladder) is the most widely used measure of this construct, but it remains unclear what exactly the MacArthur ladder measures.
The present research sought to explore the social and economic factors that underlie responses to the MacArthur ladder and its relationship to health.
We investigated this issue by examining the relationship between scores on the MacArthur ladder and measures of economic circumstances and noneconomic social status, as well as health and well-being measures, in healthy adults in the USA.
In three studies (total N = 1,310) we found evidence that economic circumstances and social status are distinct constructs that have distinct associations with scores on the MacArthur ladder. We found that both factors exhibit distinct associations with measures of health and well-being and accounted for the association between the MacArthur ladder and each measure of health and well-being.
Our findings suggest that the MacArthur ladder's robust predictive validity may result from the fact that it measures two factors-economic circumstances and social status-that are each independently associated with health outcomes. These findings provide a novel perspective on the large body of literature that uses the MacArthur ladder and suggests health researchers should do more to disentangle the social and economic aspects of subjective socioeconomic status.
主观社会经济地位与许多健康和幸福指标密切相关。麦克阿瑟主观社会地位量表（即麦克阿瑟阶梯）是衡量这一概念最广泛使用的工具，但麦克阿瑟阶梯究竟衡量的是什么仍不清楚。
本研究旨在探讨构成对麦克阿瑟阶梯反应的社会和经济因素及其与健康的关系。
我们通过研究美国健康成年人中麦克阿瑟阶梯得分与经济状况、非经济社会地位指标以及健康和幸福指标之间的关系来调查这一问题。
在三项研究（总样本量N = 1310）中，我们发现有证据表明经济状况和社会地位是不同的概念，它们与麦克阿瑟阶梯得分有着不同的关联。我们发现这两个因素与健康和幸福指标都呈现出不同的关联，并解释了麦克阿瑟阶梯与各项健康和幸福指标之间的关联。
我们的研究结果表明，麦克阿瑟阶梯强大的预测效度可能源于它衡量了两个因素——经济状况和社会地位——这两个因素各自独立地与健康结果相关。这些发现为大量使用麦克阿瑟阶梯的文献提供了一个新视角，并表明健康研究人员应更多地厘清主观社会经济地位的社会和经济方面。
