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Social Grades

This is one of the areas of recruitment that new recruiters find difficult to understand as there seem to be a lot of rules, with some interpretation required as well as some exceptions to the rules! The following information gives you guidelines but it will take experience for social grading to become second nature to you.

The social and market research sector, marketing and advertising industries use social grades as a ‘common currency’ for social classification. For recruiters it is important to understand how this works as you will usually be asked to recruit participants according to this system. The classification gives every household, or person, a grade usually based upon the occupation and employment status of the Chief Income Earner in that household.

MRS is responsible for maintaining and updating social grades using occupational groupings. They publish a booklet called Occupational Groupings, A Job Dictionary. This is the basis for social grading participants and the social and market research industry use it as their standard. The publication is available from MRS.

Social grading on occupation is a three stage process where you need to:

  • Determine the household a participant lives in. A household consists of one or more people who live in the same dwelling place and also share meals or living accommodation.
  • Determine who the Chief Income Earner is in that household. This is the person in the household with the largest income. This can come from any source - employment, pensions, state benefits.
  • Then allocate a social grade to the Chief Income Earner according to the occupation group they are in. This will be the social grade of the whole household including your participant. There are six occupation groups:

A

Professionals; very senior managers in business; top-level civil servants.

Retired people who worked in a grade A job.

People whose late spouse or civil partner worked in a grade A job.

Approximately 4% of the population

B

Middle-management executives in large organisations, with appropriate qualifications.

Principal officers in local government and the civil service.

Top management or owners of small businesses and educational and service establishments.

Retired people who worked in a grade B job.

People whose late spouse or civil partner worked in a grade B job.

Approximately 23% of the population

C1

Junior management, owners of small establishments and all other non-manual workers.

Jobs in this group have very varied responsibilities and educational requirements.

Retired people who worked in a grade C1 job.

People whose late spouse or civil partner worked in a grade C1 job.

Approximately 27% of the population

C2

Skilled manual workers.

Manual workers with responsibility for other people.

Retired people who worked in a grade C2 job and who now receive an occupational pension.

Retired people whose late spouse or civil partner worked in a grade C2 job and who now themselves receive a pension based on that job.

Approximately 21% of the population

D

Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers, apprentices and trainees of skilled workers.

Retired people who worked in a grade D job and who now receive an occupational pension.

Retired people whose spouse or civil partner worked in a grade D job and who now themselves receive a pension based on that job.

Approximately 16% of the population

E

Long-term recipients of state benefits.

Unemployed for more than six months (otherwise classify on previous occupation).

Off sick for six months or more (unless they are still being paid by their employer).

Casual workers and those without a regular income.

Intermittent workers in receipt of income support.

Approximately 9% of the population

 

Source: – Main table - Market Research Society Occupation Groupings, A Job Dictionary. 7th edition. 2010

Source: -  Percentages - British National Readership Survey. 2008

There are some occupations and life stages where the social grade isn’t immediately obvious such as:

  • Students. If living away from the family home they are always graded as C1 whatever the occupation of their parents.
  • People sharing accommodation e.g. young people all in work living in a flat or house share who pay their own proportion of the bills and provide their own food. They are graded on their own occupations.
  • Retired people. If they receive only the standard basic rate retirement pension they are classified as E. If they have a company pension, private pension, state earnings related pension (SERPS) or have private means they are graded on their previous occupation. If participants give their occupation as retired always ask what their occupation was before retirement.
  • Widowed, divorced or separated people. They are graded according to their own occupation.
  • Cohabiting couples. They are treated as being related for classification purposes.
  • Managers. The term “manager” covers a whole range of occupations and you will often need to do additional questioning to find out exactly what it encompasses. For instance a sole trader with a market stall working part-time may designate themselves as a “Managing Director”. This probably won’t fit the client’s expectation of a B participant.
  • Occasionally a client may want a participant to be socially graded on their own occupation regardless of the occupation of the Chief Income Earner in their household.

Working Status

Working status is defined as follows:

  • Full-time work = 30+ hours per week
  • Part-time work = 8-29 hours per week
  • Non-working people = less than 8 hours per week
  • Maternity/paternity leave. Clients vary as to whether they wish to include participants on parental leave. Although their social grade won’t change, the nature of a research subject might require participants who are actively working.

 

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