Elizabeth A. Klonoff

The Schedule of Racist Events: A Measure of Racial Discrimination and a Study of Its Negative Physical and Mental Health Consequences

In this article, the authors develop a brief questionnaire that assesses racist discrimination in the lives ofAfricanAmericans, and conduct preliminary studies with it. The Schedule of Racist Events (SRE) is an 18-item self-report inventory that assesses the frequency of racist discrimination (specific, stressful racist events) in the past year (recent racist events) and in ones entire life (lifetime racist events), and measures the extent to which this discrimination was evaluated (appraised) as stressful (appraised racist events). Results revealed that the SRE has extremely high internal consistency and split-half reliability. Racist discrimination is rampant in the lives of African Americans and is strongly related to psychiatric symptoms and to cigarette smoking. These findings highlight the negative consequences of racismandprovide evidencefor the validity of the SRE as a measure of (culturally specific) stress.

The Schedule Of Sexist Events: A Measure of Lifetime and Recent Sexist Discrimination in Women's Lives

This paper describes the development, reliability, and validity of the Schedule of Sexist Events (SSE), a measure of lifetime and recent (past year) sexist discrimination in womens lives. A culturally diverse standardization sample of 631 women completed the 20-item SSE. Factor analyses revealed that the SSE-Lifetime and SSE-Recent have four factors: Sexist Degradation, Sexism in Distant Relationships, Sexism in Close Relationships, and Sexist Discrimination in the Workplace. The SSE-Lifetime and SSE-Recent scales had high internal-consistency (.92, .90) and split-half (.87, .83) reliability, and the factors were similarly reliable. Validity was established by demonstrating that scores on the SSE-Lifetime and SSE-Recent correlate as well with two other measures of stressful events (the Hassles Frequency and the PERI—Life Events scales [PERI-LES]) as those measures correlate with each other. Sexist discrimination (events) can be understood as gender-specific, negative life events (stressors). Descriptive data indicated that sexist discrimination is rampant in womens lives. Additional analyses revealed significant status differences in experiencing sexist discrimination, with women of color reporting more sexism in their lives than White women.

Physical And Psychiatric Correlates Of Gender Discrimination: An Application of the Schedule of Sexist Events:

We tested the model that sexist discrimination, measured by the Schedule of Sexist Events (SSE), would account for additional variance in womens physical and psychiatric symptoms, above and beyond that accounted for by generic stressors. A series of hierarchical regression analyses, predicting symptoms on 10 different symptom outcome measures from generic stress and sexist stress (discrimination) were conducted, with the generic stressors entered on the first step and sexist discrimination on the second. Results revealed that sexist discrimination contributed significantly to the variance in womens symptoms, accounting for additional variance in those symptoms. Furthermore, sexist discrimination accounted for more of the variance than did generic stressors in premenstrual, depressive, obsessive-compulsive, somatic, and total psychiatric and physical symptoms. These findings varied with the age and ethnicity of the women and with the symptom measure used, but nonetheless suggest that sexist discrimination plays a significant role in womens most prevalent symptoms.

The African American Acculturation Scale: Development, Reliability, and Validity

This article describes the development, reliability, and validity of the African American Acculturation Scale. This 74-item scale has good construct and concurrent validity. The eight subscales, assessing eight dimensions of African American culture, have high internal consistency reliability, and the scale as a whole has high split-half reliability. African Americansscores on the scale were unrelated to social class, gender, and education. The needfor cross-validation of the scale andfor specific research projects using it are detailed.

Cultural diversity in the predictors of adolescent cigarette smoking: The relative influence of peers

A culturally diverse sample of 4375 adolescents completed a self-report inventory assessing their current amount of smoking, and several psychosocial predictors of smoking (e.g., depression, anger, stress, smoking among peers, etc). Results revealed that Whites smoke more than Blacks, Asians, and less acculturated Latinos but not more than highly acculturated Latinos. Stepwise regression analyses of the predictors of smoking found significant ethnic and acculturation differences in the relative predictive power of 18 well-known risk factors. Smoking among peers was the best predictor of smoking for White adolescents (accounting for 23.5% of the variance) but accounted for only 15% of the variance for Latino youth, 9.6% of the variance for Asian youth, and none of the variance for Black youth. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for smoking prevention programs that focus on resisting peer influences.

SEXIST DISCRIMINATION MAY ACCOUNT FOR WELL‐KNOWN GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PSYCHIATRIC SYMPTOMS

It was hypothesized that women may have more depressive, anxious, and somatic symptoms than men because they experience a deleterious stressor that men do not: sexist treatment. A total of 255 students (180 females, 75 males) at a state university completed an anonymous questionnaire containing measures of these symptoms. Women were found to exhibit significantly greater symptoms than men on all of them. Further, women who experienced frequent sexism had significantly more symptoms than men on all symptom measures, whereas women who experienced little sexism did not differ from men on any symptom measure. These findings suggest that gender-specific stressors not only play a role in psychiatric symptoms among women but may account for well-known gender differences in those symptoms as well.

Is Skin Color a Marker for Racial Discrimination? Explaining the Skin Color–Hypertension Relationship

It is widely assumed that dark-skinned Blacks have higher rates of hypertension than their lighter-skinned cohorts because the former experience greater racial discrimination. However, there is no empirical evidence linking skin color to discrimination. This study tested the extent to which skin color is associated with differential exposure to discrimination for a sample of 300 Black adults. Results revealed that dark-skinned Blacks were 11 times more likely to experience frequent racial discrimination than their light-skinned counterparts; 67% of subjects reporting high discrimination were dark-skinned and only 8.5% were light-skinned. These preliminary findings suggest that skin color indeed may be a marker for racial discrimination and highlight the need to assess discrimination in studies of the skin color–hypertension relationship.

Culture and Health-Related Schemas: A Review and Proposal for Interdisciplinary Integration

We present a comprehensive review of anthropological, sociological, and psychological theory and data on the structure, content, and function of health-related schemas. Health psychologys need to integrate specific variables and principles from the other disciplines is highlighted. Suggestions for future research are offered, and the importance of cultural factors in health beliefs is emphasized.

Culture change and ethnic-minority health behavior: an operant theory of acculturation.

Data on acculturation and ethnic-minority health indicate that acculturation has opposite effects on the same health behavior among different ethnic groups; opposite effects on different health behaviors within an ethnic group; opposite effects on the same health behavior for the women vs. the men of most ethnic groups; and no effect whatsoever on some health behaviors for some ethnic groups. This evidence is so incoherent that it is unintelligible, and hence it continues to be largely useless to health psychology and behavioral medicine. This paper presents a new theory of acculturation that renders these confusing data coherent by predicting such changes in minority health behavior a priori. By so doing, the operant model of acculturation has the potential to improve health promotion and disease prevention and thereby reduce ethnic health disparities.

Cultural diversity in causal attributions for illness: the role of the supernatural

We investigated cultural diversity in beliefs about the causes of illness and assessed the possibility that popular free-form methodologies (asking subjects to generate causes) inhibit minorities from expressing their belief in supernatural causes. As predicted, when asked to generate causes of illness and rate these in terms of their importance, whites and minorities did not differ in the number or type (natural vs supernatural) of causes they generated or in the importance rating they assigned to these. However, when these same subjects were provided with natural and supernatural causes to rate in terms of importance, minorities rated supernatural causes significantly more important than did whites, and more minorities than whites endorsed such causes. Cultural differences in causal attributions for illness are examined, and the role of methodology in determining such attributions is highlighted.