During the 1960s the NORC did a second generation of surveys which became the basis for the socioeconomic status (SES) score until the 1980s as well as the foundation for Trieman's International Prestige Scale in 1977.
Most people seem to implicitly view prestige as a weighted average of income and education and this is the operational definition used in indices like DSI and ISEI.
[5][6] The indicators most commonly used to measure SES come from Duncan's (1961) Socioeconomic Index (SEI), a composite of occupational prestige, income, and education.
In the first-year follow-up study, the National Center for Education Statistics (1990) used the Nakao and Treas (1994) revised SEI model.
Jobs with high prestige are more likely to have a higher level of pay stability, better lateral career mobility, and established professional associations.
A 2007 Harris Poll of 1,010 U.S. adults suggested that occupational prestige is linked to perceived impact on community welfare, the highest ranking jobs being firefighter, scientists, and teachers.
According to The Harris Poll (2007), the following are the changes over the last quarter century of American's view as the most and least prestigious jobs: The list of occupations by prestige assembled by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) in 1989 is the one most commonly used.