Socioeconomic scoring in an urban area of a developing country

A group of variables that might define "life-style" was selected and a questionnaire based on these was distributed to the families of 2350 schoolchildren in Accra, Ghana to determine the presence or absence of these variables. Analysis of the replies revealed a set of answers that formed a related group. A scoring system was developed in which rarer attributes were weighted, and the community was thus graded by socioeconomic status on a ten-point scale. Principles for developing questionnaires applicable to other types of community were defined.