Beliefs About Social Mobility Scale

2018-06-26 12:25 pm

Measuring Mobility Toolkit > Measure Selector > Beliefs About Social Mobility Scale

Beliefs About Social Mobility Scale

Factor: Power and Autonomy

Age: Teen, Adult

Duration: Less than 3 minutes

Reading Level: 6th-8th grade

What

Social psychologist Alexander Browman and colleagues (2017) created the Beliefs About Social Mobility Scale to measure how much people think they can change their social status.

Who

Researchers have used this scale with high school and college students living on a low income (Browman et al., 2017).

How

INSTRUCTIONS

There is an 8-item version of the scale for adults and a slightly simplified 6-item version for teens. On a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), respondents rate how much they agree with statements about the malleability of their social status, including “You can always greatly change your status in society” and, alternatively, “You can do things differently, but you can’t really change your status in society.” Researchers later reverse-code the negatively worded items so that higher values mean stronger beliefs in mobility, and then calculate a score for each respondent by taking the average of their ratings.

RESPONSE FORMAT

1 = strongly disagree; 2 = disagree; 3 = somewhat disagree; 4 = neither agree or disagree; 5 = somewhat agree; 6 = agree; 7 = strongly agree.

Google Doc (.gdoc) Microsoft Word (.docx) PDF Document (.pdf)
Google Doc (.gdoc) Microsoft Word (.docx) PDF Document (.pdf)

All Survey Questions (Adults)

  1. People can do things differently, but their status can’t really be changed.
  2. Everyone, no matter who they are, can significantly change their status in society.
  3. The status a person has in society is something basic about them, and it can’t be changed very much.
  4. People can substantially change their status in society.
  5. No matter what status a person has in society at one point in their life, they can always change it a lot.
  6. People can change even their most basic status markers.
  7. Everyone is of a certain status in society, and there is not much that they can do to really change that.
  8. As much as I hate to admit it, people can’t really change where they stand in society at large.

All Survey Questions (Teens)

  1. You have a certain status in society, and you really can’t do much to change it.
  2. Your status in society is something about you that you can’t really change very much.
  3. You can do things differently, but you can’t really change your status in society.
  4. No matter who you are, you can significantly change your status a lot.
  5. You can always greatly change your status in society.
  6. No matter what your status is at one point in your life, you can always change it quite a bit.

Why It Matters

High school and college students living on a low income who believe they can improve their social status get higher grades than do students who do not believe social mobility is possible (Browman et al., 2017). One interpretation is that when students believe they can move up in the world, they think their efforts in school will pay off. Because education can help people get out of poverty (Card, 2001), belief in social mobility may be a precursor to actual social mobility.

HEADS UP

Researchers have used this scale in only one study.

SEE ALSO

Growth Mindset Scale

“Kind of Person” Implicit Theory Scale

References

Browman, A. S., Destin, M., Carswell, K. L., & Svoboda, R. C. (2017). Perceptions of socioeconomic mobility influence academic persistence among low socioeconomic status students. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 72, 45-52.

Card, D. (2001). Estimating the return to schooling: Progress on some persistent econometric problems. Econometrica, 69(5), 1127-1160.

Destin, M., & Oyserman, D. (2010). Incentivizing education: Seeing schoolwork as an investment, not a chore. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(5), 846–849.