Constructing Wegener’s Magnitude Prestige Scale (MPS) on the Basis of Occupational Classification of the Official Statistics

The 'Magnitude Prestige Scale' (MPS) developed by Bernd Wegener on the basis of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) is an occupational prestige scale that is utilized nationally to examine a multitude of social science questions. A basic prerequisite for using the MPS is, of course, listing occupations according to the ISCO. While this condition is essentially a given for the larger, regularly carried out social science surveys, the occupational activities are listed in the official statistics according to the German 'Klassifikation der Berufe' (KLdB – Classification of Occupations). Due to the different orientation of these two classifications (international versus national) it is possible to transfer from the KLdB to the ISCO and thereby enable implementation, only at the rudimentary basis, of the Magnitude Prestige Scale for the official microdata, such as, for example, the microcensus. An alternative for this, the subject of this work, is to directly construct the MPS according to Wegener’s approach on the basis of the 'Klassifikation der Berufe' (KLdB – Classification of Occupations).

Frietsch, Rainer; Wirth, Heike, 2001: Die Übertragung der Magnitude-Prestigeskala von Wegener auf die Klassifizierung der Berufe. ZUMA-Nachrichten 48: S. 139-163 [.pdf] (4.60 MB).

Mikrodaten-Tool: Die Übertragung der Magnitude-Prestigeskala von Wegener auf die Klassifizierung der Berufe