In this chapter I discuss the methods I used to identify class boundaries
for the five different class theories of the middle class. I discuss the
data sources used in the study, my construction of the class categories
relevant to each of the five theories of the middle class, and the
operationalization of the dependent variable, political ideology.

The Class Structure and Class Consciousness Survey, coordi-
nated by Erik Olin Wright, is a multinational survey designed to
help scholars map the class structure of advanced capitalist coun-
tries and identify the class consciousness or political ideology of
residents within those countries. The survey is useful for its
inclusion of data on employment status, education, managerial
status, job autonomy and authority, and income, allowing scholars
to develop sophisticated indicators of class location. Several coun-
try surveys have been conducted, creating a large data file available
for international comparative studies of class structure and class
consciousness. For this study, the United States Survey and the
Swedish Survey were used.

The U.S. survey employed a systematic two-stage cluster sam-
ple of telephone numbers in the coterminous United States. First,

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