Configurational Similarity in Three Class Contexts in British Society

Using data from the Nuffield 1972 Occupational Mobility Survey at the 36 category level of the Hope-Goldthorpe scale, we investigate the basic structure in the dissimilarity matrices for categories of respondent with respect to their profiles of (i) fathers, (ii) fathers-in-law and (iii) spare-time associates. The major finding is that the basic structure is essentially the same in all three cases. An interpretation of this common structure is offered and some important departures from it noted. The data analysis methods used are: (a) a recent parametric multidimensional scaling method and (b) generalised Procrustes analysis. This latter method seems not to have been used in sociological research before and offers considerable potential in a variety of applications. Our results are compared with those in some similar studies and are found in the main to be concordant with them.