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The Stereotype as a Research ToolAuthor(s): Irwin DeutscherSource: Social Forces, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Oct., 1958), pp. 55-60Published by: University of North Carolina PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2573780

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OCCUPATIONALCONTACTNETWORKS 55

Durkheim held that the division of labor "creates

among men an entire system of rights and duties

which link them together in a durable way."'2

In this paper we have begun to specify some of the

social dynamics involved in such a system of

"rights and duties." We have done so in a manner

which, we expect, will lend itself to empirical

study. We have not concernedourselves with the

methodological aspects involved in the implemen-

tation and testing of the ideas presented. This

must await subsequent work.2Ibid., p. 406.

THE STEREOTYPEAS A RESEARCH TOOL*

IRWIN DEUTSCHER

Community tudies Incorporated

T IS possible or symbolswhichevokestereo-

types to be received through any of the fivesenses: the smell of garlic, the clasp of a

calloused hand, the taste of curry, the sight of

excessive make-up, the sound of a familiar phono-

graph record. On the one hand these may be

highly individualized symbols, operating uniquely

on a person as a result of some configurationof his

own past experiences. On the other hand, stereo-

types are often evoked by verbal symbols: a

whore, an angel of mercy, a Sunday school teacher,

a housewife. To the layman, these verbal symbols

mobilize a complexof ideas and images in much the

same manner that a sound concept does for the

scientist. Strong feelings about issues, personal

values, attitudes, motives, etc., when internalized

by an individual, become condensed into some

sort of stereotyped shorthand reference.The social

scientist, who participates in or otherwise under-

stands the subtleties of a culture, can learn to

identify these stereotypes and the verbal folk-

symbols which evoke them. Once understood,

these stereotypes can be exploited for research

purposes.'

THE TRADITIONAL VIEW OF OBJECTIVITY, BIAS,

AND LOADED QUESTIONS

The possibility of such exploitation is grudgingly

acknowledged by some of the better texts on

methodology, but only after careful and detailed

instruction concerning the efficacyof "objectivity"

and freedom from "bias." Such acknowledgments

may be made parenthetically:

Is the wording biased?Is it emotionally loaded orslanted towarda particularkind of answer?Does itemploystereotypes?Does it containprestige-carryingnames?Does it employ superlative erms whichpush

the answeroneway or the other?(If suchelementsofbias are present, are they there intentionally-anddoes the research urpose ustifytheir nclusion?)2

The expected answer to the rhetorical questions

up to theparenthesis s an emphatic "no." But it is

the parenthetical question which will be em-

phasized in the present paper; it implies a "yes"

answerand when such an answer can be given then

a "yes" answer becomes permissible for all the

preceding questions. If not parenthetical, the

grudging acknowledgment may be made by foot-

note. For example,after stringentwarnings against

"leading questions" in his text, one author buries

this statement in just such a manner: "Leading

questions may, of course, have value if they are

* The research used for illustrative purposes in this

paper was made possible by a grant to Community

Studies, Inc., from the American Nurses' Association.

I am especially indebted to my colleagues Howard S.

Becker, Dan C. Lortie, Thomas A. McPartland, Peter

Kong-ming New, Warren A. Peterson, and Julius Roth

for their constructive criticisms of this paper in an

earlier form.I For a penetrating analysis of the nature of stereo-

types see Maurice N. Richter, Jr., "The Conceptual

Mechanism of Stereotyping," American SociologicaZ

Review, 21 (October 1956), pp. 568-571. An example of

a rewarding functional analysis of a stereotype is pro-vided by Alvin W. Gouldner, "Red Tape as a Social

Problem," in Robert K. Merton et at. (eds.), Readerin

Bureaucarcy (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1952), pp.

410-418.

2 Arthur Kornhauser, "Constructing Questionnaires

and Interview Schedules," in Marie Jahoda, Morton

Deutsch, and Stuart Cook (eds.), Research Methods in

Social Relations, Part II, Selected Techniques (NewYork: The Dryden Press, 1951), p. 448.



56 SOCIAL FORCES

asked deliberately and the results are treated

accordingly."3

The acknowledgment may be neither paren-

thetical nor in a footnote; it may come as a con-

cession: "A 'loaded' question is not necessarily

undesirable and often has a real place in the

questionnaire.The problem is to avoid loading if

one is looking for an undistorted response."4

However, if one is looking for a distorted response,

then loading becomes an advantageous methodo-

logical device. Becausestereotypes are by definition

distortions, it should be apparent that purposeful

distortion is necessary in the identification of

stereotypical images. A final form of grudging

acknowledgment of the possibility of research

value in stereotypes comes in the form of an

afterthought: "Is the question content biased orloaded in one direction-without accompanying

questions to balance the emphasis?"5In the dis-

cussion which follows it will be seen that when a

careful effort is made to maintain just such a

balance in bias or loading, the results can be both

reliable and valid.

Rather than bemoan popular stereotyping and

attempt by complicated means to circumvent it,

the phenomenon can be exploited as an entree to

the feelings, attitudes, images, and latent re-

sponses, obscured within the respondent. In a

sense, the principleis the same as that employed in

the use of psychological projective tests, and, like

projective devices, the common stereotype can be

especially useful in research concerned with self-

conceptionsand conceptionsof others. In the latter

case, if the symbols which evoke the stereotype of

the relevant "others" can be identified, then the

respondent'sattitudes toward and images of those

others can be determined. As Litwak has so

clearly demonstrated, "The purpose of the in-

vestigator defines the bias."6No question is ever

inherently biased. As a result of his arguments,Litwak concludes that, "No longer do we say a

given type of question is 'good' or 'bad.' The

search for the 'perfect' question which is not

loaded, double-barreled,or vague becomes trivial

under this new formulation." Among other things,

Litwak now asks "For what purpose is each of

these questions useful?"

AN ILLUSTRATIVE CASE OF PURPOSEFUL BIAS

As an example of how such a process works when

applied empirically, we will examine a study, the

purpose of which was to learn something of the

nature of public images of the nurse.7 Differences

in evaluations of nurses and nursing by different

publics within a metropolitan area were to be de-

termined quantitatively (by means of a scaling

device) and interpretedwith the aid of qualitative

analysis of responsesto an open-ended question at

the end of the interview. A probability sample of

householdsin the metropolitan area, in conjunction

with a random sample of persons 18 years of ageand over within the households, resulted in nearly

one thousand complete, personally administered

interviews."

On the basis of informal conversations about

nurses, with people at bus stops, parties, cafeterias,

bars, and the like, and more formalinterviews with

such groups as unemployed laborers loitering

around their union hall and Junior League ladies

at their monthly meeting, the investigators

familiarized themselves with the way in which

people talk about nurses. It was determined that

there were four recurrent themes in the evaluative

comments about nurses; these themes were em-

ployed as the major components of an evaluative

scale which was designed to reveal differentials in

public images of the nurse. In brief, these four

components are as follows:

(1) A moral evaluiation,e.g., "Nursesare easy makes,"or "Theyareabovereproach ndremindme of [Catho-lic] sisters; they are like angels in their white uni-

forms.

(2) A social-class evaluation, e.g., "They come from

deprived backgrounds-not very good homes-andcan't affordto go to college,"or "Nursesarea better

class of people who have had good upbringingand

knowhow to talk to people."

I George A Lungberg, Social Research (New York:

Longmans, Green, and Co., 1942), p. 193, n. 11.

4 Leon Festinger and Daniel Katz, ResearchMethiods

in the Behavioral Sciences (New York: The Dryden

Press, 1952), p. 347 (italics mine).5Kornhauser, op. cit., p. 440.

6 Eugene Litwak, "A Classification of Biased Ques-

tions," American Journal of Sociology, 62 (September

1956), pp. 182-186.

7 Public Images of theNurse, Part II of A Study of the

Registered Nurse in a Metropolitan Community

(Kansas City, Mo.: Community Studies, Inc., August

1955).

8 The size of the selected sample was 1,200 individuals

with an anticipated loss of approximately 20 percent.

Actual loss was 20.2 percent (the refusal rate was 11.3

percent; the remaining 8.9 percent loss is attributable

to such factors as vacant dwellings and addresses

which could not be located).



THE STEREOTYPE AS A RESEARCH TOOL 57

(3) Evaluations based on self- or family-identification,

e.g., "I thinkthat any womanwho tries canfind betterwork than that; I certainlywouldn'tchoose to be anurse,"or "There s nothing I wouldrathersee than

to have my daughtergrowup to be a nurse."

(4) Evaluative comparisons wuith ther women's occupa-tions, e.g., "Teachings a much betterjob than beinga nurse,"or "Nurses have made somethingof them-

selves; heyaren'tsatisfiedwithjust clerkingn a storeorbeingan office lunkyorsomethingike that."

Four arbitrary scalesweredevised to elicit value-

laden stereotypes of the nurse.9 To get at the

moral evaluation we asked, "Tell me which of the

following you consider closest to your idea of a

nurse? (1) a saint, (2) a Sunday school teacher, (3)

a housewife, (4) a waitress, (5) a loose woman."

The social-class dimension was includedby asking:"Imagine that you could say all Americans are

upper class, middle class, or lower class. Tell me

where you would put most nurses?" The five

answers provided ranged from (1) upper class to

(5) lower class. The self- or family-identification

dimensionwas obtained by supplying the familiar

range of alternatives from (1) I would be very

happy, to (5) I would strongly disapprove, for the

question, "If you had a daughter, which one of

these most closely approachesthe way you would

feel about her being a nurse?"An evaluative com-

parison with other women's occupations was in-

cluded in the following form: "Imagine that you

are going to workvery close to a person for several

years. You do not know anything about the

person except that you have been given a list

which tells you the person's past occupation. You

must select one with only this knowledge. Which

one type would you select to work around?" The

alternative responsesare (1) a private secretary to

an executive, (2) a saleslady in a department

store, (3) a nurse in a doctor's office, (4) a lady

taxicab driver.There is no "out" provided for any of these

questions by a "don't know" alternative. Either

the respondentanswersthe questionor he does not.

It is true that some people resented being pushed

into selecting one of several value-laden cate-

gories. Resistance appeared most frequently

among the best educated and the most poorly

educated groups, although, for the latter group,

"resistance" may not be an accurate description.

The most poorly educated group seemed not somuch to resist stereotyping as to be unaccustomed

to thought processes involving generalization and

conceptualization. They were unable to cope with

the categories provided; the better educated group

appeared unwilling to do so.10The reaction of some

respondents who complained that the questions

didn't "make sense" is equally understandable

when we recall that the questions were designed to

get at a stereotype through an associational

pattern-to trigger a sequence of ideas which

would lead to the revelation of the respondent's

subjective image; the fact that he does not under-

stand the purpose of a question may result in its

apparent senselessness to him. Although this

could be avoided by asking only survey-type

questions with an obvious purpose, students of

attitude and opinion are learning that it is not

always advantageous for a respondent to be aware

of their purposes. Experiences with such pro-

jective devices as Rorschach, T.A.T., sentence

completion, and word-association tests (none of

which "make sense" to the respondents), indicate

that the richest and most meaningful results maybe derived from the application of more subtle

tactics.

We asked "leading" questions and we asked

"loaded" questions, because we were seeking

neither superficial information nor to test the re-

spondent's knowledge. We literally desired to

"lead" the respondent into revealing his "loaded"

feelings, rather than to obtain simperingcliches or

permit devious evasions into the realm of "don't

know." We asked "what do you feel?" not "what

do you know?" In spite of scattered resistance, avast majority of the respondentswere able to select

one response over the others and in doing so, re-

vealed something of their own value systems.

AN EMPIRICAL TEST

One way to test the proposition that stereotypes

can be employed in this manner is to observe the

9The somewhat tenuous assumption that the scale

items approximate an equal distance from one another

was made. The use of Analysis of Variance is of course

dependent on the correctness of that assumption. The

only vindication for the assumption lies in the fact that

(as is pointed out below) independent techniques not

requiring such an assumption culminate in results whichclosely approximate those obtained by analyzing the

scales.

10 For a discussion of the kinds of resistance displayed

by a sample of physicians who received this same ques-

tionnaire by mail, see this writer's "Physicians' Reac-

tionsto

aMailed Questionnaire: A Study in 'Resisten-

tialism,' " The Public Opinion Quarterly, 20 (Fall

1956), pp. 599-604.



58 SOCIALFORCES

extent to which the procedure "works" in actual

practice. An arbitraryscale is obtained by scoring

each of the four questions describedabove. Those

four scoreswere added to provide an over-all index

of each respondent's evaluation of nurses. The

same four questions were asked in reference toteachersand social workersto provide comparative

data to the nurse-evaluationscores.

If it be granted that age, sex, and social-class

groups contain within themselves some of the

characteristicsof subcultures, then it is true that

such groupshold certain values which are different

from those held by other groups. In other words,

young people's values may diverge from those of

old people; men's values from those of women;

and upper-classpeople'sfromthose of lowerclasses.

It is possible then (although not inevitable) that

stereotypes held by these different categories of

people will also vary.1l

All respondents had rated three occupational

groups (nurses, teachers, and social workers) and

their scores were classified according to age, sex,

and social class.12The Analysis of Variance test of

homogeneity was then applied. In brief, this test

measures the extent to which the scores grouped

within a cell are more like each other than they are

like scores grouped in other cells. If the variance

within the cells is significantly less than the vari-

ance among the cells, we can assume that thesystem of classification is logical in so far as it

isolates homogeneous groups of scores from other

and different homogeneous groups. Using the F

test of significance it was determined that classi-

fication into age-sex-class cells resulted in homo-

geneity at the one percent level. Further variance

analysis revealed differences in evaluation scores

between the sexes and among social-class groups-

both at the one percent level of significance. In

addition, a significant amount of variance in the

scores was found tobe

attributableto differences

among the ratings of the three occupations, i.e.,

similar groups of people manifested significant

shifts in their stereotypes as the occupational

referent was changed from nurse, to teacher, to

social worker.

Although tangential to the majorpurposeof this

paper, a brief review of findingsmay interest some

readers. The analyses revealed that in most in-

stances there was a relationship between status per-

ceptions (regardless of axis) and the images of

nurses.'3 Thus persons high in the social-class

hierarchy perceived nurses as being beneaththem, and their images were derogatory in con-

trast to the respect and admiration expressed by

those low in that hierarchy. Males perceived nurs-

ing to be a female type of work and their images

were significantly more derogatory than those of

women, who as a group held relatively favorable

images. The two groups which were most negative

in their evaluations of nurses were those men who

were the fathers of only one daughter and physi-

cians as an occupational group.'4In addition to

women and lower-classpeople, extremely favorable

stereotypes were revealed by those who numbered

nurses among their personal acquaintances and

those who had experienced professional nursing

care. Although some doubt remains as to the

importance of age, the tendency is for older people

to hold more favorable stereotypes of nurses than

younger ones. Rural-urban origins appeared to

have no effect on the public images.

Although the preliminary Analysis of Variance

revealed a significant amount of variance attribut-

able to the differencesin rating the three occupa-

tions, further analysis indicated that this was duealmost entirely to the low ratings given to social

workers. That occupational group was evaluated

significantly poorer than both teachers and nurses.

Teachers rated only slightly higher than nurses.

THE QUESTION OF VALIDITY

It has been demonstrated that people who were

similar to one another provided evaluation scores

which were similar to one another and which were

differentfrom those provided by different kinds of

people. There is, then, evidence concerning the

reliability of responses to loaded questions. Be-

11It is also possible that in some respects they may

coincide. There are some kinds of stereotypes which are

nearly universal in our society, regardless of sub-cul-

tural identifications within the society.

12The WarnerISC was the index used to approximateclass position.

13 For a full report of the study, the reader is referred

to Piblic Images of the Niurse,op. cit.14 A sample of physicians was drawn from the four

county medical directories. Unlike the larger sample,

each member of which was contacted and interviewed

personally, the physicians received their questionnaire

in the mail. Important variations appeared within the

physician sample. These are discussed in The Evalua-

tion of Nurses by Male Physicians, Part I of A Study of

the Registered Nurse in a Metropolitan Community

(Kansas City, Mo.: Community Studies, Inc., March1955).



THE STEREOTYPE AS A RESEARCH TOOL 59

cause the scores are derived from questions which

were designed to elicit stereotypes, we might

assume that the differences in scores reflect dif-

ferences in stereotypes. The validity of this

assumption is supported by evidence from four

independence sources.(1) The main reason for devising such a round-

about means of measuring how people evaluate

nurses, rather than simply asking them, was the

assumption that some respondentstend to want to

cooperate with the interviewer-to give "good"

answers. Therefore, there would be some who,

although they would not make explicit negative or

derogatory statements about nurses, would reflect

negative or derogatory attitudes in their index

scores. This would appear to be true in so far as

index scores tend to be less positive than state-ments made in response to the open-ended ques-

tion, "How do you think nurses, as a whole, are

different from most other women?"Although that

question was designed to provide meaning and

content to the quantitative scores,'5 t also served

as a validating instrumentfor those scores.

(2) Although negative comments could not be

expected to occur as frequently as negative index

scores, nevertheless, there should be a high degree

of relationship between the scores and the com-

ments. The comments of extreme scorers (both

high and low) were analyzed in order to test thisrelationship. Those comments (responses to the

open-ended question) were classified as "favor-

able," "neutral," or "unfavorable."'6 Typical

favorable comments are: "I think they set an

example for the rest of us in patience and self-

sacrifice,"and "Peoplelook up to nurses; they are

wonderfulpeople." Examples of neutral comments

include, "I don't think there is any difference

between nurses and other women," and "Nurses

have special training to do nursing." Unfavorable

comments may be illustrated by, "They get hard-

ened to life and to people," "They sure like to love

those doctors in the dark; they love the doctors

and neglect the patients," "They are a hardboiled

lot," and "Some of them are rough, tough, and

ornery loose women." As might be expected, manyof the comments could not be classified as favorable

or unfavorable. Nearly half of those with the

extreme favorable index scores gave neutral,

evasive, or inconsistent responses to the open-

ended question, while over half of those with

unfavorable index scores gave those kinds of re-

sponses. The important point, in terms of valida-

tion, is that almost five times as many respondents

in the unfavorable index group made unfavorable

or derogatory comments about nurses as did those

in the favorable indexgroup. At the other extreme,47 percent of the favorable scorers had clearly

favorable things to say about nurses (most of the

remainder being neutral), while only 24 percent

of the unfavorable extreme scorers made favorable

comments about nurses. The Chi-square of the

distribution is significantat the .05level, indicating

that there is a significantrelationshipbetween the

kinds of things people say about nurses and the

scores they achieve in rating nurseson the occupa-

tional evaluation index.

(3) Another independent check on the validity

of the index is based on responsesto a questionnotused in computing the index. That question asks

the respondent to choose from among several

alternatives the one combination of traits which

he thinks best describes the way nurses are (not

should be). Choices involving two of those al-

ternatives are revealing for the present purposes:

one of these is "kind and sympathetic" and the

other is "blunderingand incompetent." If it will

be granted that persons who choose to describe

nurses as "kind and sympathetic" are favorably

evaluating them while those who select "blunder-ing and incompetent"arelikely to be inclined to an

unfavorable evaluation, it can be expected that

there will be a real difference in the index scores

provided by these two groups. Four hundred and

thirty-two respondentsselected "kind and sympa-

thetic"; their mean index score was 76. Only 37

people chose "blundering and incompetent";

their mean index was 84 (the lower the index, the

more favorable the evaluation). The t test shows

the differencebetween these means is significantat

the five percent level. Again there is evidence thatpeople whose index scores are unfavorable, are

15 The interviewers were instructed to probe for up to

fifteen minutes on this question, which appeared at the

end of the interview. The responses provided clues as to

why people held favorable or unfavorable images of the

nurse.

16 The theoretical range of the index is from 40 to

190. Scores actually ranged from 40 (most favorable)

to 150 (most unfavorable). Thirty respondents gave

nurses a score of 40. These are our "most favorable"

extreme. In order to obtain an equivalent sized group

for the "most unfavorable" extreme, it was necessary

to include all those who had rated nurses from 120-150.

There were 38 of these, 26 of whom rated nurses at120.



60 SOCIALFORCES

more likely to be those who make unfavorable

comments about nurses-an indication that the

index is measuringwhat it is intended to.

(4) Finally, the rank order of the three occupa-

tions (nursing, teaching, and social work) accord-ing to their mean index scores is the same as the

rank order of percentages of respondents who

checked "blundering and incompetent" for each

occupation. The more favorable the index, the

smaller the percentage of respondents. Each of

these fourvalidity checksprovidesa bit of evidence

which, in combination, provide a high degree of

confidencethat the index was, as intended, a re-

flection of stereotypical value judgments.

CONCLUSIONS

There is, then, not only a theoretical basis for the

notion that stereotypes can be exploited as re-

search tools, but also a pragmatic basis: It works.

Value-laden, leading, loaded questions, allowing

an extremelylimited rangeof responses,did evoke

stereotypical answers which reflected common

images held by certain segments or publics within

a metropolitan population. As a result, it was

possible to determine the relative evaluations of an

occupationalgroupheld by men, by women, by old

people and youngsters, and by persons of different

socio-economic strata.'7 Once these basic distinc-

tions were made, it was then possible to analyze

the content and meaning of the stereotypes by

examining responses to the open-ended question.

We need only turn to W. I. Thomas to grasp the

implications of such stereotypes. They reflect

definitionsof the situation and, to the extent that

specific segments in our society define an occupa-

tional group in a certainmanner, those definitions,

being real to the definers-become real in terms of

their overt behavior in relation to the membersof

that occupational group. In the particular case

used as an example in this paper, there are im-

mediate practical implications to the nursing pro-

fession concerning such problems as recruitment

and professionaleducation. As Merton so convinc-

ingly stated in his "Self-Fulfilling Prophesy,"'8educational and public relations campaignsare rela-

tively sterile measures as comparedwith the effec-

tiveness of organizational or structural changes

which can be effected on the basis of a clear under-

standing of the ways in which the situation is de-

fined. The self-fulfilling prophecy can be revised

when such knowledge is available.

17 The data were also reclassified and tested accord-

ing to more specifically relevant criteria, e.g., those who

had experienced professional nursing care as compared

to those who had not and those who numbered nurses

among their personal friends as compared to those who

did not. Respondents who were the parents of only one

daughter were compared with those who had no

daughters and those with more than one daughter.

18 Robert K. Merton, "The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy"

in R. K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure

(Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1949), pp. 179-195.

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