A Guide to the Study of Social and Economic Groups and ... - icrisat

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statistical significance (see also section below on CONRANK, and Tables 10
and 11 in the Appendix).
SAMPLE-WEIGHTED CASTE RANK (SAMRANK)
In January 1980 a second system of ranking was devised, by Jere R. Behrman,
based on the rank ordering of sample household castes. This system takes
into account the relative frequency with which households of different
castes appear in the sample. It is listed in Table 1 as SAMRANK. The
hypothesis behind this system is that castes which rank above a large
number of households of other castes are to be weighted more heavily than
castes ranking above a smaller number of households. The system does not
take into account the frequency of households of a caste in the village,
but their frequency in the VLS ,sample instead. Frequency in the sample
depends upon the relative frequency with which households of different
castes ,
reported agriculture as their primary economic activity. Thus the
SAMRANK measure properly indicates the degree of exclusivity and high rank
of agricultural households of a given high caste vis-a-vis farmers and . carm
laborers of lower castes. It does'not take into account caste fellow
households of the sampled castes if these households do not follow farming
or farm labor as their main occupation nor does it take into account castes
which are wholly nonagricultural. Since mainly nonagricultural households
usually account for 25% to 30% of the households of a sample village, the
Jnalyst must therefore be precise in drawing conclusions based or the
1 ;ample-weighted rank. The SAMRANK score is expressed in percentage points.
Scores have been prepared only for the April, 1978 and October, 1982
sample castes.