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CAMSIS and the Analysis of Social Interaction Distance

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Abstract

This chapter introduces the CAMSIS approach to ‘social interaction distance’ (SID) analysis (Sect. 4.1). We discuss the background to the approach in Sect. 4.2 and theories that are associated with it in Sects. 4.3 and 4.4. Subsequently, Chaps. 5 and 6 turn to the empirical features of CAMSIS scales and the practical aspects of their construction.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In practice, the UK’s SOC major group scheme is substantially hierarchical, since conceptions of ‘skill’ and of prestige are institutionalised into its taxonomy (e.g. Szreter 1984).

  2. 2.

    For an impressive collection of information of this character on UK occupations, see McKnight and Elias 1997; for online resources incorporating data about the average circumstances of people in different occupations for the USA and Europe, see the projects ‘O*NET’ (2008) and Wageindicator (2013).

  3. 3.

    Another nice way to describe such scores is a term coined by Laumann and Guttmann in 1966, that such scores depict the ‘relative associational contiguity’ of occupations.

  4. 4.

    This intuitive framing is quite a close match to the technical procedures that are involved. In the case of correspondence analysis, the scores constructed are derived by solving the matrix of social interaction data for its ‘eigenvectors’. Eigenvectors identify vectors that capture the most substantial proportion of the matrix as is possible through a single vector (see Weller and Romney 1990).

  5. 5.

    Although small differences often arise because data on mobility between occupations intrinsically incorporates some influence of time period in the structure, in a way that does not apply to data on other social interactions between occupations.

  6. 6.

    Stewart et al. (1980) discussed a relevant example which was common at the time in the UK, namely, the propensity for the job of ‘clerk’ to indicate, for males at least, the early stages of a privileged white-collar career.

  7. 7.

    Savage et al. (2015, p. 436) in fact refer to CAMSIS scales as the ‘Cambridge social contact scale’.

  8. 8.

    In Chan and Goldthorpe’s (2007) comparison, it is presumed a priori that status is a continuous dimension and class is categorical. This analysis is inspired by the Weberian distinction of class and status, yet an alternative reading of Weber suggests rather that status is likely to be characterised by categorical divisions and class by continuity (Bihagen and Lambert 2012).

  9. 9.

    The SIOPS scores are linked to ISCO88 units which are in turn linked to US 1990 occupational unit group codes using two separate macros published by Ganzeboom (2016). The CAMSIS scores are the scales for men and for women derived for the US 1990 occupational codes as downloadable from the CAMSIS project website.

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    Paul Lambert & Dave Griffiths

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Lambert, P., Griffiths, D. (2018). CAMSIS and the Analysis of Social Interaction Distance. In: Social Inequalities and Occupational Stratification. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-02253-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-02253-0_4

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