Measurement of Socioeconomic Status in Iran: A Systematic Review

Aims: The socioeconomic status is considered to be a multi-dimensional indicator, and there is no definite standard to measure it.The aim of the present study is to perform a systematic review to evaluate whether there are the same indicators for measuring socioeconomic status in the published articles in the medical sociology in Iran.
Study Design: Systematic Review.
Methodology: We searched the English language literature on socioeconomic status in health researches in Iran between 1990 and October 2014: MEDLINE using PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Science Direct. In addition, we searched these Iranian electronic databases: Iranian Scientific Information Database (SID) and IranMedex.
Results: Our finding indicated the three factors – education, occupation, and income – were the dominant indicators for measuring socioeconomic status in both English and Persian articles. Only four studies (English articles) had composite measure and made a standard indicator in their studies. Eleven studies had no clear categories for measuring socioeconomic indicators.
Conclusion: We encountered various definitions and indicators, mostly because of poor quality of the studies with diversity in methods and populations.