Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 24, 2026

Breakfast Habits among Schoolchildren in the City of Uruguaiana, Brazil
Published on: July 29, 2020
[Use of Spanish proposals for measuring social class in health sciences]
Elisa Chilet-Rosell1, Carlos Álvarez-Dardet, Antònia Domingo-Salvany
1Grupo de Investigación de Salud Pública, Universidad de Alicante, San Vicente del Raspeig, Alicante, España. elisa.chilet@ua.es
Objective:
Recognizing the need for a consensus tool to measure social class in health sciences, in 1995 the Spanish Society of Epidemiology (Sociedad Española de Epidemiología [SEE]) made a proposal for such a measure. The aim of this article was to explore the bibliometric impact of the SEE's proposal.
Methods:
Articles citing the SEE's report and those citing articles published as a result of the report were identified using Google Scholar and Scopus. The information extracted from these articles consisted of year, nationality and impact factor of the journal, self-citation, information source, subject area, city of the first author, type of publication, study design, use of social class as a variable, number of social class categories, and the use of education or occupation to determine social class.
Results:
The number of citations progressively increased. Citations also showed heterogeneity in the subject. Generally, citations were found in original articles and articles with a cross sectional design, were published in journals with impact factor and were by researchers working in Barcelona or Madrid.
Conclusions:
The SEE's proposal has proved to be an increasingly useful tool, applicable in different contexts. As suggested by the SEE, this proposal may need to be updated.
Related Concept Videos
Overview of Biostatistics in Health Sciences
Models of Health Promotion and Illness Prevention II
The agent-host-environment model states that disease results from...
Bias in Epidemiological Studies
Models of Health Promotion and Illness Prevention I
The health belief model (HBM) attempts to predict health-related behavior in specific belief patterns. According to the HBM, a person's...
Statistical Methods for Analyzing Epidemiological Data
Dimensions of Health and Illness

