Applied Research Program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD 20892-7344, USA.
Ethn Dis. 2009 Autumn;19(4):447-53.
The development of measures of self-reported racial/ethnic discrimination is an active area of research, but few measures have been validated across multiple racial/ethnic and language groups. Our goal is to develop and evaluate a discrimination measure that is appropriate for use in surveys of racially and ethnically diverse populations.
To develop our measure, we employ a mixed-methods approach for survey research, drawing from both qualitative and quantitative traditions, including literature review, cognitive testing, psychometric analyses, behavior coding as well as two rounds of field testing using a split-sample design. We tested our new measure using two different approaches to elicit self-reported experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination.
Our new measure captures four dimensions of racial/ethnic discrimination: 1) frequency of encounters with discrimination across several domains (eg, medical care, school, work, street and other public places); 2) timing of exposure (eg recent, lifetime); 3) appraisal of discrimination as stressful; and 4) responses to discrimination.
Because of the growing interest in measurement of racial/ethnic discrimination in health surveys, we think this report on the methods informing the development and testing of the discrimination module that will be used on the California Health Interview Survey would be useful to other researchers. The application of mixed methods to rigorously test the validity and reliability of our instrument proves to be a good roadmap for measuring racial/ethnic discrimination in multicultural and multilingual populations.
自我报告的种族/民族歧视措施的发展是一个活跃的研究领域，但很少有措施经过多个种族/民族和语言群体的验证。我们的目标是开发和评估一种适合在不同种族和民族人群调查中使用的歧视衡量标准。
为了开发我们的衡量标准，我们采用了一种混合方法的调查研究方法，从定性和定量传统中汲取灵感，包括文献综述、认知测试、心理计量分析、行为编码以及使用分样本设计进行两轮现场测试。我们使用两种不同的方法来引出自我报告的种族/民族歧视经验，来测试我们的新衡量标准。
我们的新衡量标准捕捉到了种族/民族歧视的四个维度：1）在几个领域（例如医疗保健、学校、工作、街头和其他公共场所）遇到歧视的频率；2）暴露的时间（例如最近、终身）；3）将歧视评估为有压力；4）对歧视的反应。
由于人们对健康调查中种族/民族歧视的衡量越来越感兴趣，我们认为，关于为加州健康访谈调查开发和测试歧视模块的方法报告对其他研究人员来说将是有用的。混合方法的应用严格测试了我们仪器的有效性和可靠性，为衡量多元文化和多语言人群中的种族/民族歧视提供了一个很好的路线图。
