One of the chief concerns of the study was to learn more about the attitudes and beliefs of workers in various positions in the Ghanaian occupational structure. If factory workers are in the forefront of occupational modernization and if people with different occupations have varying attitudes and do not behave in the same way outside the workplace (because of their differing backgrounds and socialization on the job), as was expected, then comparing workers in various occupations should provide some information on changes to be expected in the society as modernization proceeds.

In a way, different skill levels represent different degrees of incorporation in modern industrial technology. Unskilled workers are often doing jobs which have changed little or not at all over a long period of time. Skilled workers may be using modern machinery and mass production methods, but some of these (especially the carpenters) may be working in much the same way, though under greater pressure for quality and production, as they would if working on their own. The semiskilled workers are more symbolic of a new era; few jobs like these were available in Ghana a generation ago and they are not comparable to non-industrial jobs. Clerical work is largely the same wherever it is done; this work is seldom mechanized in Ghana. Clerical workers are included because of the comparisons which can be made between them and manual workers, especially semiskilled workers.