Abstract:
This study of occupational prestige in Thai rural areas used 9 groups or 89 occupations. The occupational prestige scores were given by 371 rural thais in the four regions. The findings revealed that rural Thai people gave highest scores to administrative workers group and lowest to service workers group. When considering by occupation, the highest prestige scores were ranked respectively : ministers, high armed forces officer, medical dental veterinary and related workers, provincial governors, professional nurses, etc. The lowest prestige scores were given to the following occupation : masseuses and prostitutes, transport conductors, fortune tellers, other service workers, laborers, etc. From the prestige scores rated, we can classify the Thai social stratification into 5 strata : very high, high, middle, relatively low, and low classes. When we compared the Thai occupational prestige scores to the Standard International Prestige Scores given by Treiman1 most of the occupations did not receive the same score. Thai scores were higher than Treiman's scores.