Scaling of social prestige by direct and indirect psychophysical methods

Abstract

The professional social prestige practiced by: Social Assistants, Biologists, Dentists, Nurses, Engineers, Pharmacists, Physicists, Physical Therapists, Phonoaudiologists, Physicians, Psychologists, Chemists, and Sociologists was scaled by psychophysical methods of pair comparisons (indirect) and the magnitude estimations (direct). The results showed: 1) both of the methods yield substantially different scaling; 2) the pair comparisons scale (proportion or z) is a logarithmic function of the magnitude estimations scale; 3) the pair of comparison scale (proportion or z) is a linear function of the logarithms of the magnitude estimations scale; and 4) a high correlation (rho = .95) between the degrees of prestige attributed to the professions obtained by both methods. With these results we can conclude that: 1) the continuous of social prestige (not metric) scaled by these two methods yield a relation similar to the obtained in the sensorial continuous (metric); and 2) the continuous of social prestige has the following characteristics: quantitative, prothetic and non-qualitative (metathetic).