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BOGARDUS SOCIAL DISTANCE

SCALE: DEFINITION, SURVEY
QUESTIONS WITH EXAMPLES

by Adi Bhat
Global VP - Sales and Marketing at QuestionPro
Home Consumer Insights Market Research
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Bogardus Social Distance Scale: Definition
and Example
Bogardus social distance scale is defined as a scale that measures
varying degrees of closeness in people towards other members of
diverse social, ethnic or racial groups. It measures the degrees of
warmth, hostility, indifference or intimacy between these groups.

This scale was developed by Emory Bogardus in 1924 and named

after him. It is one of the oldest and still in use, psychological
attitude scales. Due to its unidimensional nature, prejudice or the
lack of it towards only one community or group can be measured at
one point of time. The Bogardus social distance scale is also known
as a cumulative scale because an agreement with one item shows
agreement with any number of preceding items; which makes it a
subset of the Guttman scale. The other major types of
unidimensional scales are the Likert scale and the Thurstone scale.
The three major types of unidimensional scales are the Thurstone
Scale, Likert Scale and the Guttman scale. The Bogardus social
distance scale is also known as a cumulative scale because
agreement with one item shows agreement with any number of
preceding items; which makes it a variation of the Guttman scale.

For example, the Bogardus social distance scale is set up as a series

of questions that ask an individual or a respondent, their feelings or
closest degree of intimacy towards a member of a group in question.
A score of 1 is assigned to each option, asking the individual what
the closest degree of intimacy is that he or she would be willing to
admit a member of the group in question. The following is asked:

 Would you be willing to marry a member of this group? (1.0)

 Would you be willing to have a member of this group as your
close personal friend? (2.0)
 Would you be willing to have a member of this group as your
neighbour? (3.0)
 Would you be willing to have a member of this group as your
colleague at work? (4.0)
 Would you be willing to have a member of this group as a
citizen of your country? (5.0)
 Would you be willing to have a member of this group visit your
country as a non-citizen? (6.0)
 Would you be willing to have a member of this group be
excluded from associating with your country in any way? (7.0)
The question can be represented in the survey as:
The ratings of multiple people from one community is collected as a
cumulative and the average of this number represents the value of
the social distance scale.
Characteristics of Bogardus Social Distance Scale
 Cumulative in nature: The Bogardus social distance scale is
a variation of the Guttman scale(or cumulative scale) because any
agreement with a statement is an assumption of agreement with
any statements preceding the selection. For instance in the above
example, if you were to agree to marry a magician and your rating
is 1.0, it is assumed that you in effect are also agreeing to this
member also being your neighbor and close personal friend or
even a citizen of your country. In the similar example, if you agree
for a person to be a citizen of your country (5.0), you also agree to
them visiting or your country as a non-citizen or not have them be
associated with your country at all.
 7 point scale: The Bogardus social distance scale uses a 7
point social distance scale to track empathy between 2 social
groups. The lower rating 1.0 indicates a less social distance
between the 2 groups whereas a higher rating like 5.0 indicates a
higher social distance between the 2 groups.
 Measure social distance: The option with the rating scale
1.0 measures the proximity to a certain individual and the option
with the rating scale as 7.0 measures the distance between to that
individual. The Bogardus scale in brief, aims to measure the social
distance which any group desires to keep with other groups/people
with whom it has functional relations.

How to construct a Bogardus Social Distance

Scale Survey?
A Bogardus social distance scale if conducted right, can throw light
on the perception or prejudice of one group towards another. Steps
in successfully conducting this survey is:

 Define the focus and research objective: Before

conducting the survey, it is very important to define the focus of
the research and the end objective. Since the Bogardus social
distance scale helps understand the prejudice between two
distinctive set of social groups, it is important to understand the
end objective. This could be on the basis of distinctive
characteristics like religion, socioeconomic status or ethnicity.
 Develop the scale: The objective of the scale is to indicate
how close or far away is the respondent from the members of the
other group. This distance is measured by psychological
statements. A favorable attitude is indicated by the closeness of
the and an unfavorable attitude is indicated by the distance. The
scale is then to be set up with 7 statements which consist of two
anchor points – 1.0 where the favorable attitude is extreme
closeness and 7.0 where the unfavorable attitude is extreme
distance. Referencing the above example, marriage is indicated by
1.0 due to the nature of its closeness and not being associated
with the country is indicated by 7.0 as the respondent group does
not want to be associated with the other group at all.
 Developing the responses: It is important to create a
number of options which have to be sent to judges or experts to
rate towards the favorableness of the study. These experts have to
have an in-depth understanding of sociological factors and
measurement so as to appropriately validate each option. The
experts are expected to rate the options yes or no depending on
the validity of social distance between communities. The 7 options
or statements that are highest rated are selected as the social
distance scale options to be administered to the respondent. For
similar sounding options, the options with the consensus of the
experts are used.
 Administer the scale to respondents: The Bogardus social
distance scale is easy to administer as the question is easy to
answer. It is to be explained to a respondent that an answer
selection that is made means it also signifies the acceptance of all
preceding options. Hence selecting 1.0 or any option close to this
means an agreement of all preceding options and selecting 7.0 or
an option close to this is a strong disagreement with the research
topic.
 Collect response and calculate cumulative: Each
respondent has an option to select one statement in a Bogardus
social distance scale where each option specifies the attitude of a
member of one group towards a member or members of another
group. The average of the cumulative responses is the level of
social distance between the two groups. Since this scale is
unidimensional, collecting social distance between multiple groups
requires multiple questions to be administered.
 Uses of a Bogardus Social Distance Scale
The Bogardus social distance scale survey is one of the oldest forms
of methods of measuring attitude and prejudice. It can also be used
to measure specific variables such as:

 Religiosity
 Socioeconomic status
 Alienation
It is used very differently across the years. Some use cases of these
are:

1. Traditional use: This survey has been traditionally used in

understanding the psychology between two or more distinctive
social groups. The was initially used in the early 19th when people
extensively started moving around the globe. The scale was used
to measure the social distance metrics of communities towards
other immigrating communities. For example, after a
Bogardus scale question survey was conducted across mainland
US, the results showed that the social distance between Canadians
immigrating to the US was the lowest. The social distance between
Hindus and Muslims however was the highest. In this case, the
cumulative score of the propensity towards the Canadians was
towards the 1.0 score where mainland Americans were
comfortable with marrying Canadians and any preceding option.
On the flipside, the scores that the Hindu and Muslim ethnicities
got were towards the opposite end of the social distance scale
where the cumulative consensus was that people of such
ethnicities were not easily welcome to immigrate to the country.
2. Modern use: A modern day use of the Bogardus distance
scale is in a work environment where the social distance prejudice
is measured between existing employees of an organization and
new incoming employees. The anchor scales are 1.0 where the
new employee can be a part of the same team versus 7.0 where
the prejudice is towards that employee not even being in the same
domain. This helps measure how alienated a new employee would
be in an existing workplace culture or team.

Advantages of a Bogardus Social Distance Scale

Some advantages of the Bogardus social distance scale are:

 Ease of use: The scale is very easy to create and administer.

The complication could only arise in the formulating of each option
in the distance scale.
 Measure prejudice: The Bogardus social distance scale
measures prejudice or underlying thoughts or feelings between
two separate distinctive groups of people that may range from
different social groups.
 Reliable: The scale is reliable because it measures each
respondent’s feelings towards a subject. The question type also
ensures that each respondent selects an option.
 Ordinal levels of measurement: In this scale, ordinal data is
collected from each respondent. This helps in establishing an order
of preference towards the group in question.

Disadvantages of a Bogardus Social Distance

Scale
Some disadvantages of the Bogardus social distance scale are:

 Ordering of options: The ordering of options can mean

different things to different individuals in a group, community of
family. This is on the basis of preference of each individual
members. Hence, the validity of distance in the options in a
bogardus social distance scale may not hold true for each
respondent.
 Equal distance in quantitative social distance: The
distance in between two options is subjective. The distance
between 3 and 4 or 6 and 7 may not be equidistant. Also, it is
impossible to prove that option 6 is double the distance of 3.
 Uni-dimensional: The nature is uni-dimensional and collects
data accordingly. There is no scope to dig into the reasoning of the
responses.
 Impossible to measure validity: Each member of a social
group could select a response on the basis of their perception of
the other group in question. But since the rating doesn’t allow to
delve into the reason for selecting that rating, it is impossible to
measure validity.
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