The NRS social grades are a system of
demographic classification used in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
. They were originally developed by the
National Readership Survey
The National Readership Survey was a joint venture company in the UK between the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), the Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) and the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA). It provided audience r ...
(NRS) to classify readers, but are now used by many other organisations for wider applications and have become a standard for market research.
[ Wilmshurst, J. & MacKay, A., ''The Fundamentals of Advertising'', (1999)] They were developed in the late 1950s and refined in following years and achieved widespread usage in 20th century Britain. Their definition is now maintained by the
Market Research Society
The Market Research Society is a professional body for market research based in London, England. It was established in 1946 at the offices of the London Press Exchange. It represents the views of its members to government and in the press.
MRS ...
.
[Occupation groupings: a job dictionary]
Market Research Society
, London, 2006.
The distinguishing feature of the NRS social grade is that it is based on occupation, rather than wealth or property ownership.
Grades
The classifications are based on the occupation of the head of the household.
[
The grades are often grouped into ABC1 and C2DE; these are taken to equate to middle class and working class, respectively. Only around 2% of the UK population is identified as ]upper class
Upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of people who hold the highest social status, usually are the wealthiest members of class society, and wield the greatest political power. According to this view, the upper class is gen ...
,
See also
* Acorn (demographics)
*National Statistics Socio-economic Classification
The National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (often abbreviated to NS-SEC) is the official socio-economic classification in the United Kingdom. It is an adaptation of the Goldthorpe schema which was first known as the Nuffield Class Sche ...
*Social class
A social class is a grouping of people into a set of Dominance hierarchy, hierarchical social categories, the most common being the Upper class, upper, Middle class, middle and Working class, lower classes. Membership in a social class can for ...
* Socioeconomic status
References
External links
National Readership Survey information on social grade and its discriminatory power
MORI information on the grades
Demographics of the United Kingdom
Social class in the United Kingdom
Socio-economic mobility
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