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Social Status and Educational Aspirations

 

            In their research article"Social Status and Educational and Occupational Aspiration", the authors William H. Sewell, Archie O. Haller and Murray A. Straus have raised the primary research questions about whether youth's levels of educational and occupational aspirations were directly influenced by the family's position in the status structure. Using methodologies of Chi-square, they argued that with both sexes and intelligence controlled, different status positions were important influences on levels of educational and occupational aspiration(Sewell et al. 1957). The study was an experimental-based research which was consisted of a sample size of 4,167 persons that were randomly selected from both private and public high school seniors in Wisconsin. The sample was restricted to older youth from nonfarm families who have not entered the labor market. Furthermore, the sample features a large and diverse population. The purpose of this study was to test the general hypothesis that levels of educational and occupational aspiration of youth of both genders were associated with the social status of their families while the effect of intelligence are controlled. From there, the authors believed that social status had significant importances on youth's levels of educational and occupational aspirations (Sewell et al. 1957) . .
             The methodology used in this research was mainly Chi-square test. To elaborate on that, the logic behind the Chi-square was to test the term independence which referred to the relationship between the variables. The variables would be independent if two variables were completely unrelated to each other (Healey and Prus 2013). The two distinct dependent variables of this study were level of educational aspiration and level of occupational aspiration. Social status, on the other hand, was the independent variable which was measured by the prestige of parental occupation based on North-Hatt occupational prestige value.


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