Evalutions of Selected Jobs and Occupations by University Students in a Developing Country: Pakistan

Utilizing the North-Hatt method, scores for 52 jobs and occupations were calculated from responses of 129 university students in West Pakistan. Where comparisons were possible, these evaluations were examined alongside those reported by U.S. respondents. Ratings of a smaller number of occupations were also compared for Philippine, Pakistan and U.S. samples. The paper proposes that such inquiry can, under certain conditions, provide a useful measure of the relative capacity of an important segment of the population of a developing country to staff and operate a technically advanced, complex, industrial-commercial economy. T he social valuation of work as measured by evaluations of jobs and occupations has been the subject of numerous studies in the United States and elsewhere in recent years.1 Data and interpretations reported from these studies, whenever they have been used for more than simple sociographic or descriptive purposes, have tended to be tied to analyses of stratification or of mobility or to studies of the structure and functioning of work organizations and work activities.2 Scarcely any attention has been given to the value which information of this kind might have as a possible means of measuring, or gauging on a comparative basis, the level, tempo or direction of the "modernization process"y in industrializing countries, although something of this sort may be implied in the work of Inkeles and Rossi,3 *This paper is one of a series growing out of studies of social change in Pakistan supported by grants-in-aid from the Joint Committee on Near and Middle East Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies and from the American Philosophical Society. 1 The earliest of these, according to a sociologist, Mapheus Smith who reviewed the work that had been done in some 13 studies prior to 1943, is George S. Counts' "The Social Status of Occupations: A Problem in Vocational Guidance," School Review, 33 (January 1925), pp. 16-27; Mapheus Smith, "An Empirical Scale of Prestige Status of Occupations," Americant Sociological Reviezw, 7 (April 1943), pp. 185-192. 2 See for example, Albert J. Reiss, Jr., Occupations and Social Statuts (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961). 3 Alex Inkeles and Peter H. Rossi, "National Comparisons of Occupational Prestige," Amneirican Jo,urnal of Sociology, 61 (January 1956), pp. 329339. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.111 on Tue, 09 Aug 2016 06:12:08 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms EVALUATION OF JOBS BY STUDENTS 67 Tiryakian,4 and Helling.5 Hence it seems desirable to raise the question explicitly. Although numerous and serious questions have been raised about what it is, exactly, that is being measured in such a device as the North-Hatt rating scale,6 as well as about its curious jumbling together of highly specific public "offices" ("jobs" such as Suprem-te Cour-t Justice) with very broad occupational categories, it seemed reasonable, despite several additional technical problems posed by any attempt to apply the instrumient cross-culturally, to undertake one more "survey" using the North-Hatt procedure, but using it specifically to answer the question whether those kinds of jobs and occupations which are highly ratedand presumably functionally critical-in technologically advanced societies are comparably valued in a society striving for (but not yet having achieved) extensive industrialization and high level productivity. Undoubtedly there are many specialists on the problems and processes of economic developmnent who would be inclined to dismiss this factor of relative job and/or occupational status as a minor factor in comparison with such other factors as natural resources, availability of investment capital, market opportunities and the like; but there are a number of social scientists such as Daniel Lerner, David McClelland, E. C. Hagen, and others, who draw attention to an increasingly subtle, and sometimes indirect, order of social psychological, cultural and social structural factors which are relevant, if not, indeed, critical in a causal sense, to change in the direction of a complex, "modern," high production, industrial-commercial social system. It is not the purpose of this paper to explore such questions as the relationslhip between the evaluation which a university student (presumably about to enter the labor force) gives to a range of jobs and occupations and his likelihood, or his itzotivation, to enter those he rates highest. Nor have we tried to probe into whether or not the students in giving their responses, are reporting their own personal evaluations or reporting what they think "others" in their society generally-or what other university students-rate highly.7 The maj or operative assumption underlying this study is actually a very simple one. It is that societies-or populations-reporting ratings most similar to those reported for approximately equivalent jobs and occupations in industrialized, rational-bureaucratic "modern" societies are actually or potentially most modernl in their orientations to work and most "ready" among developing societies for effective participation in a modern type social order -other factors being equal. Reported here are the evaluations assigned to 39 occupations by a sample of an important sector of the Pakistani population-namely university students (all candidates for the M.A. or the M. Sc. degrees or for the equivalent degrees in public and business administration)-which are then compared with the evaluations previously given to approximately these same jobs and occupations (or their nearest equivalents) by the sample of U. S. respondents used by C. C. North and P. K. Hatt in their original study. (For purposes of this study differences in the size or composition of the two samples were not considered important since the U. S. responses are taken, whether validly or not, to be the standard of evaluations in a "modern" society against which the Pakistani student responses are to be measured: the two samples are not being contrasted with each other as two 4 Edward A. Tiryakian, "The Prestige Evaluation of Occupations in an Under-Developed Country: The Philippines," American Joutrntal of Sociology, 63 (January 1958), pp. 390-399. Also his "Occupational Satisfaction and Aspiration in an Underdeveloped Country: The Philippines," Econornic D'evelopm.ent and Cultutral Chansge, 7 (July 1959), pp. 431-444. 5 George Helling, "Changing Attitudes toward Occupational Status and Prestige in Turkey," University of Omaha, unpublished ms. 6 See C. C. North and P. K. Hatt, "Job and Occupations: A Popular Evaluation," Opihion News, 9 (September 1947), pp. 3-13. For comments on some questions related to the use of this scale (including its application and interpretation) as well as proposals for improving upon it, see for example, Reiss, op. cit., and also Richard L. Simpson and Ida Harper Simpson, "Correlates and Estimates of Occupational Prestige," Anerican Journal of Sociology, 66 (September 1960), pp. 135-140. 7 The North-Hatt instructions state: "Now I am going to ask you how you would judge a number of occupations. For example . . . ," and request "For each job mentioned, please pick out the statement that best gives your own personal opinion of the general standing that such a job has." op. cit., p. 4. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.111 on Tue, 09 Aug 2016 06:12:08 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms