Jargon Buster
Social grade
- What does this mean?
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A classification of individuals according to their socio-economic status. As with age groups, the social classification system used should depend on any planned use of comparative data.
The tables below and on the next page show the classification schemes used in three dominant national models. However, because they are based on differing theoretical assumptions about social structures, the different schemes shown are not directly comparable and only approximate to each other.
Commonly used social classification systems
National Readership Survey (JICNAR)
Classification Description A Upper middle class B Middle class C1 Lower middle class C2 Skilled working class D Working class E Subsistence Registrar General's Social Classes
Classification Description I Professionals II Managerial & technical IIIN Skilled non-manual IIIM Skilled manual IV Partly skilled V Unskilled NS-SEC 2001
Classification Description 1 Managerial & professional 2 Intermediate occupations 3 Small employers & own account workers 4 Lower supervisory & technical 5 Semi-routine & routine
Never worked & long-term unemployed - How did we get this definition?
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Such approaches provide a means of classifying individuals according to their socio-economic status, so they are a crucial tool for profiling (and understanding aspects of) an organisation’s catchment, markets and customer base.
But whereas the JICNAR National Readership Survey classifications (i.e. A, B, C1, C2, D, E) and the Registrar General’s Social Class system (i.e. I, II, IIIN, IIIM, IV, V) have been used in the past, the introduction of a new system for use in the 2001 National Census (the so-called National Statistics Social and Economic Classifications [NS-SEC] ) changed things considerably.
This major shift resulted from dissatisfaction with the previous systems, which were felt to be increasingly unrepresentative of UK society and the new patterns of work and employment within it. What’s more, the advent of the NS-SEC system has led to a vigorous debate between marketers and sociologists.
The key issues in this debate are that, on the one hand, the JICNAR categories are thought to be more commonly understood than those from the other systems, but on the other hand, the new NS-SEC system was used by the 2001 Census and has been built to reflect the current shape of employment and occupations. Hence these two classification systems work on different conceptual bases. And as a result, classifications using one cannot be easily converted into classifications using the other. This has major implications for anyone wanting to combine data based on the JICNAR social grades (such as elements of the area profile reports and the new NS-SEC categories used in the Census data.
- Related and similar definitions
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The main thing to do, for anyone wishing to use data based on both the JICNAR and NS-SEC categories, will be to decide which body of aggregate data offers the biggest potential of meeting the relevant research objective. Thus any survey or analysis should be structured accordingly.
In response to this challenge, the Market Research Society’s Census and Geodemographics Group [MRS CGG] has explored ways of approximating the NS-SEC Census categories to the traditional JICNAR social grades. In a paper on the issue, the MRS CGG reports that approximating the Census data for individuals aged 16 to 64 years old, creates data within ± 3% of the NRS JICNAR categories. But they also advise that it is inappropriate to use approximation for anyone older than 64 years of age.
(Furthermore a highly detailed article from the International Journal of Market Research [2004] vol. 6, no. 2 on an algorithm created to carry out such a conversion is downloadable for a fee.)
- When to use
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Social grade classification systems can be used to support the profiling of catchment areas, potential markets and audiences. As such they can be used as part of wider research and analysis activity and as an aspect of report writing.