Status Inconsistency and Participation in Social Movements: an Application of Goodman's Hierarchical Modeling

Goodman's hierarchical modeling is used to analyze the status inconsistency configuration of 67 active participants in an anti-pornography social movement and 44 persons who actively opposed the movement. The substantive results indicated the need to interpret status inconsistency effects in light of the second-order interaction of all three stratification variables—education, occupation and income. We found that inconsistencies between two of the stratification dimensions changed the association between the third dimension and participation in a social movement in the positive direction. A modification of the over-rewarded/under-rewarded inconsistency hypothesis was advanced as a special case of the general finding. The methodological results indicate that the Goodman hierarchical modeling technique is a promising system for establishing empirical linkages between significance testing and substantive interpretations with regard to the area of status inconsistency.