Status Inconsistency, Social Mobility, Status Integration and Structural Effects

There are important methodological similarities among four different sociological theories: (1) the status inconsistency approach; (2) theories concerning the effects of social mobility; (3) the Gibbs-Martin status-integration approach, and (4) the analysis of structural or compositional effects. In each of these theories there is the notion that a dependent variable may be affected by deviance or peculiar combinations of statuses. If these theories are stated in simple mathematical form, identification problems can be noted. Unless restrictive assumptions can be made, there will be too many unknowns for solution. This has important implications for the testability of such theories.