JICNARS

JICNARS - Joint Industry Committee for National Readership Survey.

A widely used concept in describing a target group market is that of social class. The most commonly used system to describe these differences within media and sales is the JICNARS social grading scale. It was originally devised as a way of measuring newspaper audiences. Despite its wide use in the media, there are a number of difficulties with this scale, not least its concept of 'head of the household' which is assumed to be male.


However, even with difficulties,
researchers still use the scale
today so they can compare                           Small upper class       --
 their results with one and
other.                                           Medium-sized middle class      -----
                     
                                                  Large manual working class   -----------

Social Grade	Social Status	Occupation
A	Upper middle-class	High managerial, administrative or professional
B	Middle-class	Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1	Lower middle-class	Supervisory or clerical, managerial, administrative or professional
C2	Skilled working class	Skilled manual workers
D	Working class	Semi and unskilled manual workers
E	Those at lowest	State pensioners or widows (no other earner), casual or lowest-grade workers