Vol. 108 No. 2 August 2001 | Elizabeth Goodman, MD*†; Nancy E. Adler, PhD§; Ichiro Kawachi, MD, PhD||¶; A. Lindsay Frazier, MD||#; Bin Huang, MS*; and Graham A. Colditz, MD, DrPH||
This article reports on the development and initial evaluation of a new, adolescent-specific measure of subjective social status (SSS) and its relationship to adolescents' physical and psychological health. The MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status (10-point scale) was used to assess SSS among 10,843 adolescents and a subsample of 166 paired adolescent/mother dyads from the Growing Up Today Study. The scale measures two dimensions of SSS: perceptions of familial placement in society and personal placement in the school community. The instrument demonstrated excellent reliability. Adolescents had higher society ladder rankings than their mothers, and older adolescents' perceptions of familial placement in society were more closely correlated with maternal perceptions. SSS explained 9.9% of the variance in depressive symptoms and was independently associated with obesity. Community ladder rankings were more strongly associated with health outcomes than society ladder rankings, even after controlling for sociodemographic factors and SES. The findings suggest that SSS may undergo developmental shifts as adolescents mature, and that subjective perceptions of social status are important determinants of health outcomes. Further research is needed to understand how these perceptions affect health prospectively and how they interact with objective measures of SES.This article reports on the development and initial evaluation of a new, adolescent-specific measure of subjective social status (SSS) and its relationship to adolescents' physical and psychological health. The MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status (10-point scale) was used to assess SSS among 10,843 adolescents and a subsample of 166 paired adolescent/mother dyads from the Growing Up Today Study. The scale measures two dimensions of SSS: perceptions of familial placement in society and personal placement in the school community. The instrument demonstrated excellent reliability. Adolescents had higher society ladder rankings than their mothers, and older adolescents' perceptions of familial placement in society were more closely correlated with maternal perceptions. SSS explained 9.9% of the variance in depressive symptoms and was independently associated with obesity. Community ladder rankings were more strongly associated with health outcomes than society ladder rankings, even after controlling for sociodemographic factors and SES. The findings suggest that SSS may undergo developmental shifts as adolescents mature, and that subjective perceptions of social status are important determinants of health outcomes. Further research is needed to understand how these perceptions affect health prospectively and how they interact with objective measures of SES.