Translation and Psychometric Analysis of the Self-Perceived Social Status Scale in Two Spanish-Speaking Samples

Abstract

As is the case in social animals that seek social status, pursuit of status is also a motivational imperative for humans because a favorable group position benefits survival and reproduction. Evolutionary perspectives in anthropology and psychology have acknowledged the existence of two status-seeking strategies in humans: Dominance and cultural prestige. In the present work a self-perceived social status scale was translated from English to Spanish, the subscales’ reliability was tested and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were applied in order to test the structure of the scale in two Spanish-speaking samples (Madrid, Spain, and San José, Costa Rica). Results indicate that some items correlate lowly with their respective subscales and they had to be omitted from the analysis. On the other hand, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed that a bi-dimensional structure is the best option available to identify the way in which people understand the group of items but statistical indicators suggest that a completely acceptable model is still lacking. Future work could improve measurement and advance our understanding regarding status-seeking processes and how humans take part in that process.