Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2011 Jun;34(3):493-504.
doi: 10.1016/j.adolescence.2010.06.001. Epub 2010 Jul 1.

Dimensions of adolescent subjective social status within the school community: description and correlates

Helen Sweeting  1 , Patrick West, Robert Young, Shona Kelly
Affiliations

Dimensions of adolescent subjective social status within the school community: description and correlates

Helen Sweeting et al. J Adolesc. 2011 Jun.

Abstract

School pupils strive to meet both school-defined and social goals, and the structure of adolescent self-concept is multidimensional, including both academic and non-academic self-perceptions. However, subjective social status within the school community has been represented as a single dimension. Scottish 15-year olds participating in a school-based survey (N = 3194) rated their own status, compared to their school year-group, via images of seven 10-rung ladders. These generated a very high response rate, and factor analysis distinguished three dimensions: (1) ladders representing "popular", "powerful", "respected", "attractive or stylish" and "trouble-maker"; (2) "doing well at school" and "[not] a trouble-maker"; and (3) "sporty". Unique relationships with variables representing more objective and/or self-report behavioural measures suggest these dimensions are markers of "peer", "scholastic" and "sports" status. These analyses suggest multiple dimensions of adolescent social hierarchy can be very simply measured and contribute towards the development of more robust instruments within this area.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
“Example”, “popular”, “doing well at school” and “powerful” ladders as depicted in the pupil questionnaire.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Adler N., Epel E., Castellazzo G., Ickovics J. Relationship of subjective and objective social status with psychological and physiological functioning: preliminary data in healthy white women. Health Psychology. 2000;19(6):586–592. - PubMed
    1. Adler P., Kless S., Adler P. Socialization to gender roles: popularity among elementary school boys and girls. Sociology of Education. 1992;65:169–187.
    1. Adler N., Stewart J. The MacArthur scale of subjective social status. March, 2007. http://www.macses.ucsf.edu/Research/Psychosocial/notebook/subjective.html Summary prepared in collaboration with the Psychosocial Working Group. Retrieved 23.06.08, from.
    1. Anderson C., John O., Keltner D., Kring A. Who attains social status? Effects of personality and physical attractiveness in social groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2001;81(1):116–132. - PubMed
    1. Bellmore A.D., Cillessen A. Children’s meta-perceptions and meta-accuracy of acceptance and rejection by same-sex and other-sex peers. Personal Relationships. 2003;10:217–233.

Publication types