Refining a socio-economic status scale for use in community-based health research in India

OBJECTIVE: Socio economic status is an important determinant of health and disease in population. Various scales for measuring the same exist in modern Indian society each with it's own limitations. Present study was done to abridge the existing and latest available Aggarwal Scale. STUDY DESIGN: Cross Sectional Study. MATERIAL AND METHODS: All relevant information pertaining to Aggarwal et al scale was collected for 197 households and analyzed in SPSS 16. Data reduction was done using Factor Analysis (FA) under which Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was used. RESULTS: Four components were selected based on criteria Eigen value of more than one and elbowing in scree plot. All the 22 items of Aggarwal et al were divided among these 4 components. Based on factor loadings four reduced scales were constructed. Percentage agreement of reduced scales with original scale increased as we increased the number of items in the scale. Analysis narrowed down the 22 items of Aggarwal et al scale to six items e.g. locality, education of husband/wife, occupation of husband/wife, family possessions, caste and monthly per capita income. These 6 items together accounted for 49% of the variation and can be taken as a surrogate measure of SES of the family. CONCLUSION: We have presented reduced versions of Aggarwal et al scale along with degree of agreement with the original scale. Authors propose the use of these scales to measure SES to overcome the time constraint in practicing research.