Bogardus Social Distance Scale

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Bogardus Social Distance Scale is a psychometric scale created by Emory S. Bogardus to empirically measure people's willingness to participate in social contacts of varying degrees of closeness with members of diverse social groups, such as other racial and ethnic groups, sex offenders, and homosexuals.

The scale asks people the extent to which they would be accepting of each group (a score of 1.00 for a group is taken to indicate no social distance):

As close relatives by marriage (score 1.00)
As my close personal friends (2.00)
As neighbors on the same street (3.00)
As co-workers in the same occupation (4.00)
As citizens in my country (5.00)
As only visitors in my country (6.00)
Would exclude from my country (7.00)

The Bogardus Social Distance Scale is a cumulative scale (a Guttman scale), because agreement with any item implies agreement with all preceding items.

Research shows that the extent of social distancing is decreasing slightly and fewer distinctions are being made among groups.