Subjective culture is a cultural group's characteristic way of perceiving its social environment. An important aspect of a social environment are the jobs available for the consideration of an individual. The present study is an exploratory study directed at the examination of job perceptions among a group of white and black adolescents and the hardcore unemployed. This study had two main goals: (a) instrument development, and (b) the gathering of data on subjective culture. To reach these goals it was desirable that as many disparate samples as possible should be used. It was possible to obtain four geographically and demographically distinct samples: (1) white female college students; (2) black working-class and lower-class high school boys from the Chicago Heights area; (3) white high school boys, working-class and lower-class, and some Spanish-speaking adults from Chicago Heights; and, (4) black adult subjects classified as "hardcore unemployed," from St. Louis, Missouri. The purpose of using these samples was to be able to generalize to that situation in which black males with vocational problems try to become integrated in a highly heterogeneous white establishment. White females were used because the investigators felt that they are the best examples of carriers of white middle-class culture, and thus would provide an "extreme-groups" comparison to the black sample. (Author/JM)