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. 2011 Spring;8(1):159-177.
doi: 10.1017/S1742058X11000129. Epub 2011 Apr 15.

MEASURING EVERYDAY RACIAL/ETHNIC DISCRIMINATION IN HEALTH SURVEYS: How Best to Ask the Questions, in One or Two Stages, Across Multiple Racial/Ethnic Groups?

Salma Shariff-Marco  1 , Nancy Breen  2 , Hope Landrine  3 , Bryce B Reeve  2 , Nancy Krieger  4 , Gilbert C Gee  5 , David R Williams  6 , Vickie M Mays  7 , Ninez A Ponce  8 , Margarita Alegría  9 , Benmei Liu  10 , Gordon Willis  2 , Timothy P Johnson  11
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MEASURING EVERYDAY RACIAL/ETHNIC DISCRIMINATION IN HEALTH SURVEYS: How Best to Ask the Questions, in One or Two Stages, Across Multiple Racial/Ethnic Groups?

Salma Shariff-Marco et al. Du Bois Rev. 2011 Spring.

Abstract

While it is clear that self-reported racial/ethnic discrimination is related to illness, there are challenges in measuring self-reported discrimination or unfair treatment. In the present study, we evaluate the psychometric properties of a self-reported instrument across racial/ ethnic groups in a population-based sample, and we test and interpret findings from applying two different widely-used approaches to asking about discrimination and unfair treatment. Even though we found that the subset of items we tested tap into a single underlying concept, we also found that different groups are more likely to report on different aspects of discrimination. Whether race is mentioned in the survey question affects both frequency and mean scores of reports of racial/ethnic discrimination. Our findings suggest caution to researchers when comparing studies that have used different approaches to measure racial/ethnic discrimination and allow us to suggest practical empirical guidelines for measuring and analyzing racial/ethnic discrimination. No less important, we have developed a self-reported measure of recent racial/ethnic discrimination that functions well in a range of different racial/ethnic groups and makes it possible to compare how racial/ethnic discrimination is associated with health disparities among multiple racial/ethnic groups.

Keywords: Differential Item Functioning; Discrimination; Prejudice; Psychometric; Race/Ethnicity; Racism; Split-ballot; Surveys.

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References

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