Construction and Validation of a Social Stratification Scale: Cambridge Social Interaction and Stratification (CAMSIS) Scale for China in the 21st Century

Abstract

CAMSIS scale measures the long-term position of occupations in social hierarchies. The CAMSIS-China scale, which measures the social interaction distance among occupations as well as the social hierarchies of China in the 21st century, was constructed through the Goodman’s class of Row-Column Association Models II (RCII) according to the occupation tables formed by CGSS data from 2003 to 2018. The validity of the CAMSIS-China scale has been verified. The results show that the most outstanding feature of the CAMSIS-China scale is that farm labors are at the lowest ends, and their scores are separated from other occupations with clear boundaries. Another feature is that occupations characterized by government and public institutions are with unusually high scores. Patterns of specificity reflect that the hukou and danwei sector/ownership, as key institutions to facilitate the redistribution of resources and life chances among Chinese citizens, affect social interaction patterns.