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Quantifying Older Black Americans' Exposure to Structural Racial Discrimination: How Can We Measure the Water In
S E LaFave1, K Bandeen-Roche2, G Gee3
1Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Summary
This study developed a novel measure to quantify structural racial discrimination across a person's life and U.S. history. This tool aims to document inequities and inform policies for racial equity.
Area of Science:
- Social Sciences
- Public Health
- Sociology
Background:
- Structural racial discrimination in the USA, rooted in historical enslavement, persists through dynamic and often unobservable manifestations.
- Existing methods struggle to comprehensively measure structural racism across diverse settings, institutions, life stages, and historical periods.
- There is a critical need for a robust, adaptable measurement tool to assess lifelong exposure to structural discrimination.
Purpose of the Study:
- To design and develop a novel instrument for measuring structural racial discrimination.
- The measure aims to be applicable across diverse contexts, life courses, and geographies, suitable for large national datasets.
- To provide a tool that facilitates documentation of inequities and informs policy decisions for racial equity.
Main Methods:
- Employed an exploratory mixed-methods approach, including qualitative interviews with 15 older Black adults.
- Conducted focus groups with 38 discrimination researchers and key stakeholders to inform instrument design.
- Identified 27 indicators of structural racial discrimination across nine theoretical contexts and matched them with historical administrative data.
Main Results:
- Developed an instrument to quantify structural racial discrimination exposure among older Black Americans.
- The measure accounts for variations across contexts, the life course, and geographical locations using home address data.
- This approach offers a low-burden method for participants, enabling multifaceted measurement as more data becomes available.
Conclusions:
- Presents a novel framework for assessing structural racial discrimination, integrating theory with lived experiences.
- Addresses a significant gap identified by researchers and policymakers for a life-course approach to measuring structural racism.
- The developed instrument is a promising step toward more thorough documentation of inequities and evidence-based policy for racial equity.
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