Bogardus social distance scale

Last updated

The Bogardus social distance scale is a psychological testing scale created by Emory S. Bogardus to empirically measure people's willingness to participate in social contacts of varying degrees of closeness with members of diverse social groups, such as racial and ethnic groups.

Contents

The scale asks people the extent to which they would be accepting of each group (a score of 1.00 for a group is taken to indicate no social distance):

The Bogardus social distance scale is a cumulative scale (a Guttman scale), because agreement with any item implies agreement with all preceding items.

Research by Bogardus first in 1925 and then repeated in 1946, 1956, and 1966 shows that the extent of social distancing in the US is decreasing slightly and fewer distinctions are being made among groups. The study was also replicated in 2005. The results supported the existence of this tendency, showing that the mean level of social distance has been decreasing comparing with the previous studies. [1]

For Bogardus, social distance is a function of affective distance between the members of two groups: ‘‘[i]n social distance studies the center of attention is on the feeling reactions of persons toward other persons and toward groups of people.’’ [2] Thus, for him, social distance is essentially a measure of how much or little sympathy the members of a group feel for another group.

Criticisms

  • First, individual options within the scale may be insufficiently refined, with the effect that a respondent's ordering of options may be different for different subtypes of one or more options presented as undifferentiated.
  • For example, given a respondent's personal history of differing power relationships with different types of close family members, a respondent might consider him/herself bound to accept a divorced or widowed parent's choice to marry a member of a disfavored group while being indifferent toward the prospect of a sibling's marrying a member of that group and objecting to the prospect of a child's marrying a member of that group.
  • In addition, differing levels of attachment to different immediate-family members may prompt different responses: A respondent who believes associating with members of a given group to be detrimental might simultaneously a) object to the prospect of a group member's marriage to an immediate family member for whom the respondent retains strong affection, b) be indifferent to or grudgingly accept that group member's marriage to an immediate family member with whom the respondent has little contact, and c) welcome the supposed harm that the respondent anticipates that marriage to that group member will inflict on an immediate family member toward whom the respondent bears animosity.
  • Second, the cumulative status of the scale as presented is vulnerable to individual, subcultural, and cultural differences in the relative positions of these items, as well as to changes in those orderings since the scale's development.
  • Differences in the ordering of these items decrease the inter-rater reliability of any individual survey conducted at a given time.
  • For example, an individual who is estranged from his or her close family members may care less about whom they marry than about who is in his or her circle of close friends, and a respondent whose poor social skills and/or social anxiety limit the respondent's ability to initiate friendships may welcome anyone who comes the respondent's way despite that person's membership in a group disfavored by the respondent.
  • The larger the number of persons who place these items in different orders, the less strongly representative of the community is the ordering favored by a majority or plurality of surveyed individuals. This problem includes but is not limited to the "salad bowl" multicultural scenario in which subsets of a given overall community are internally relatively homogeneous but retain characteristics that distinguish them from other subsets of that overall community.
  • The longer the time interval between surveys in a series, the more vulnerable cross-temporal surveys are to changes in the ordering that constitutes the metric used to evaluate a given survey's results and the changes between successive surveys.
  • For example, in cultures in which average social interaction between members of the same geographic community has decreased since the scale's development (as studies such as Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone" have suggested with respect to the U.S.), a significant number of persons may interact more with their co-workers than with their physical neighbors, and for these people a disfavored group member's presence in the same workplace may be more objectionable than that member's residence on the same street would be.
  • Likewise, especially for younger generations, whose members are on average more geographically mobile than were their elders at a comparable age, a significant number of persons may interact more with their friends, co-workers, and/or neighbors than with their siblings-, parents-, and/or children-in-law, with the effect that a respondent may envision him/herself being less bothered on a daily basis by having a disfavored group member as a relative-in-law than s/he would by having that individual as a co-worker or neighbor. In addition, a respondent who prefers not to associate with members of certain groups but respects others' freedom of association may accept a close relative's choice of a disfavored group member as a spouse even when that respondent would refuse to consider choosing the group member to be one of his or her own close friends.
  • Third, the assumption of an equal difference in quantitative social distance between the various options complicates any effort at generalization and/or comparison, whether in intrapersonal or interpersonal comparisons and whether for time-specific, longitudinal, or intervalic surveys.
  • For example, if a respondent considers the difference in social distance between "3" and "4" to be more or less than the difference between "5" and "6," it would likely be inaccurate to infer that a disfavored group at level "6" is twice as distant as a disfavored group at level "3," and even if two respondents agree on the quantitative level of distance associated with each option, it would be inaccurate to average a "2" response from one and a "6" response from the other as a "4."
  • This difficulty is compounded when different individuals assign different absolute levels of distance to, and with them different absolute amounts of difference between, given options in the scale.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Parrillo, Vincent N.; Donoghue, Christopher (2005). "Updating the Bogardus social distance studies: a new national survey". The Social Science Journal. 42 (2): 257–271. doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2005.03.011. S2CID   145665603.
  2. ↑ Bogardus, E. S. (1947). "Measurement of Personal-Group Relations". Sociometry. 10 (4): 306–311. doi:10.2307/2785570. JSTOR   2785570.
  3. ↑ Karakayali, Nedim. 2009. "Social Distance and Affective Orientations." Sociological Forum, vol. 23, n.3, pp. 538–562, 2009.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georg Simmel</span> German sociologist and philosopher (1858–1918)

Georg Simmel was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic.

In the social sciences, scaling is the process of measuring or ordering entities with respect to quantitative attributes or traits. For example, a scaling technique might involve estimating individuals' levels of extraversion, or the perceived quality of products. Certain methods of scaling permit estimation of magnitudes on a continuum, while other methods provide only for relative ordering of the entities.

Questionnaire construction refers to the design of a questionnaire to gather statistically useful information about a given topic. When properly constructed and responsibly administered, questionnaires can provide valuable data about any given subject.

Survey methodology is "the study of survey methods". As a field of applied statistics concentrating on human-research surveys, survey methodology studies the sampling of individual units from a population and associated techniques of survey data collection, such as questionnaire construction and methods for improving the number and accuracy of responses to surveys. Survey methodology targets instruments or procedures that ask one or more questions that may or may not be answered.

In sociology, social distance describes the distance between individuals or social groups in society, including dimensions such as social class, race/ethnicity, gender or sexuality. Members of different groups mix less than members of the same group. It is the measure of nearness or intimacy that an individual or group feels towards another individual or group in a social network or the level of trust one group has for another and the extent of perceived likeness of beliefs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social research</span> Research conducted by social scientists

Social research is research conducted by social scientists following a systematic plan. Social research methodologies can be classified as quantitative and qualitative.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Likert scale</span> Psychometric measurement scale

A Likert scale is a psychometric scale named after its inventor, American social psychologist Rensis Likert, which is commonly used in research questionnaires. It is the most widely used approach to scaling responses in survey research, such that the term is often used interchangeably with rating scale, although there are other types of rating scales.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Questionnaire</span> Series of questions for gathering information

A questionnaire is a research instrument that consists of a set of questions for the purpose of gathering information from respondents through survey or statistical study. A research questionnaire is typically a mix of close-ended questions and open-ended questions. Open-ended, long-term questions offer the respondent the ability to elaborate on their thoughts. The Research questionnaire was developed by the Statistical Society of London in 1838.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Response bias</span> Type of bias

Response bias is a general term for a wide range of tendencies for participants to respond inaccurately or falsely to questions. These biases are prevalent in research involving participant self-report, such as structured interviews or surveys. Response biases can have a large impact on the validity of questionnaires or surveys.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dramaturgy (sociology)</span> Sociological perspective

Dramaturgy is a sociological perspective that analyzes micro-sociological accounts of everyday social interactions through the analogy of performativity and theatrical dramaturgy, dividing such interactions between "actors", "audience" members, and various "front" and "back" stages.

In social science research, social-desirability bias is a type of response bias that is the tendency of survey respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favorably by others. It can take the form of over-reporting "good behavior" or under-reporting "bad", or undesirable behavior. The tendency poses a serious problem with conducting research with self-reports. This bias interferes with the interpretation of average tendencies as well as individual differences.

Customer satisfaction is a term frequently used in marketing to evaluate customer experience. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals." Enhancing customer satisfaction and fostering customer loyalty are pivotal for businesses, given the significant importance of improving the balance between customer attitudes before and after the consumption process.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diamond of opposites</span> Plot used in psychodrama groups

The diamond of opposites is a type of two-dimensional plot used in psychodrama groups. This tool can illuminate the presence of contradictions in processes that cannot be detected by any single questionnaire item using a traditional format such as the Likert scale. The diamond of opposites is a sociometric scaling method that simultaneously measures positive and negative responses to a statement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social psychology (sociology)</span>

In sociology, social psychology studies the relationship between the individual and society. Although studying many of the same substantive topics as its counterpart in the field of psychology, sociological social psychology places relatively more emphasis on the influence of social structure and culture on individual outcomes, such as personality, behavior, and one's position in social hierarchies. Researchers broadly focus on higher levels of analysis, directing attention mainly to groups and the arrangement of relationships among people. This subfield of sociology is broadly recognized as having three major perspectives: Symbolic interactionism, social structure and personality, and structural social psychology.

Consensus-based assessment expands on the common practice of consensus decision-making and the theoretical observation that expertise can be closely approximated by large numbers of novices or journeymen. It creates a method for determining measurement standards for very ambiguous domains of knowledge, such as emotional intelligence, politics, religion, values and culture in general. From this perspective, the shared knowledge that forms cultural consensus can be assessed in much the same way as expertise or general intelligence.

Acquiescence bias, also known as agreement bias, is a category of response bias common to survey research in which respondents have a tendency to select a positive response option or indicate a positive connotation disproportionately more frequently. Respondents do so without considering the content of the question or their 'true' preference. Acquiescence is sometimes referred to as "yea-saying" and is the tendency of a respondent to agree with a statement when in doubt. Questions affected by acquiescence bias take the following format: a stimulus in the form of a statement is presented, followed by 'agree/disagree,' 'yes/no' or 'true/false' response options. For example, a respondent might be presented with the statement "gardening makes me feel happy," and would then be expected to select either 'agree' or 'disagree.' Such question formats are favoured by both survey designers and respondents because they are straightforward to produce and respond to. The bias is particularly prevalent in the case of surveys or questionnaires that employ truisms as the stimuli, such as: "It is better to give than to receive" or "Never a lender nor a borrower be". Acquiescence bias can introduce systematic errors that affect the validity of research by confounding attitudes and behaviours with the general tendency to agree, which can result in misguided inference. Research suggests that the proportion of respondents who carry out this behaviour is between 10% and 20%.

Stuart Carter Dodd (1900-1975) was an American sociologist and an educator, who published research on the Middle East and on mathematical sociology, and was a pioneer in scientific polling.

In social psychology, social value orientation (SVO) is a person's preference about how to allocate resources between the self and another person. SVO corresponds to how much weight a person attaches to the welfare of others in relation to the own. Since people are assumed to vary in the weight they attach to other peoples' outcomes in relation to their own, SVO is an individual difference variable. The general concept underlying SVO has become widely studied in a variety of different scientific disciplines, such as economics, sociology, and biology under a multitude of different names.

In sociology, social transformation is a somewhat ambiguous term that has two broad definitions.

A clique, in the social sciences, is a small group of individuals who interact with one another and share similar interests rather than include others. Interacting with cliques is part of normative social development regardless of gender, ethnicity, or popularity. Although cliques are most commonly studied during adolescence and middle childhood development, they exist in all age groups. They are often bound together by shared social characteristics such as ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Examples of common or stereotypical adolescent cliques include athletes, nerds, and "outsiders".

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.