Harry Ganzeboom’s

Tools for deriving occupational status measures from ISCO-08

with

interpretative notes to ISCO-08

Click here for ISCO-68

Click here for ISCO-88

ISCO-08 stands for the 2008 International Standard Classification of Occupations maintained by the International Labour Office. ISCO-08 will replace ISCO-88 as the most frequently used tool for classifying occupations in comparative social research in the next decade, much like ISCO-88 has replaced its predecessor ISCO-68. ISCO-88 has been an extremely useful instrument for harmonizing detailed and crude national occupational classifications to a common key. It has also become the standard tool to classify occupations in many national and international research projects such as ESS, EVS, ISSP, PIAAC and PISA.

The ISMF project uses ISCO-68 and ISCO-88 as tools for standardizing occupations and will gradually incorporate ISCO-08. The ISMF-project currently provides the following conversions for public use:

• Conversions of national classifications into ISCO-68 as well as ISKO-88.
• Conversions of ISCO-68 and ISCO-88 into internationally standardized measures of occupational status (prestige, socio-economic status, and EGP classes).
• Conversions of ISCO-68 and ISKO-88 into one another.

ISCO-08 will soon replace ISCO-88 as the standard occupational classification in comparative social research. The ISMF project will expedite this transition by providing tools to use ISCO-08 in social research and in particular derive occupational status measures that can be used in statistical models.

Presentations:

• ISCO-08: Perspectives, prospects and applications (Florence, May 2008)
• Occupation Coding using ISCO-08. Training session for PIAAC (Bologna, Jan. 2010)
• Do’s and Dont’s of Occupation Coding, with an extension on ISCO-08 (Bologna, Jan 2010). See also full document.

See for further information:

• An overview of the ISCO-08 in major, sub-major, minor and unit groups (with ISEI-08 codes (last revised Jan. 12 2010).
• Questions and answers on ISCO-08
• Questions and answers on ISEI-08
• Question and answers on ISEC-08, EGP and ESEC.

SPSS syntax modules:

• Labels for the International Standard Classification of Occupations 2008
• Assignment of ISEI (International Socio-economic Index of Occupational Status) scores to ISCO-08 codes.
• Assignment of SIOPS (Treiman's) prestige scores to ISCO-08 codes.
• Assignment of Erikson-Goldthorpe-Portocarero (EGP) occupational class category codes to ISCO-08 codes.
• Conversion of ISCO-88 into ISCO-08
• Conversion of ISCO-08 into ISCO-88
• Translation of ISCO-08 in 29 EU languages.

Please cite use of these conversion tools as: Ganzeboom, Harry B.G.; Treiman, Donald J., “International Stratification and Mobility File: Conversion Tools.” Amsterdam: Department of Social Research Methodology, http://www.harryganzeboom.nl/ismf/index.htm. <Date of last revision>.

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