Conceptualizing and measuring ethnic discrimination in health research.

This paper presents the General Ethnic Discrimination Scale, an 18-item measure of perceived ethnic discrimination that can be used in health research with any ethnic group. The 1569 participants (half college students, half community adults) completed the General Ethnic Discrimination scale and measures of cigarette smoking and of psychiatric symptoms. Results revealed that the General Ethnic Discrimination subscales model the latent construct of perceived ethnic discrimination equally well for Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Whites. Discrimination was strongly related to psychiatric symptoms and to current cigarette smoking for ethnic minorities and Whites alike, but such relationships were stronger for ethnic minorities. Minorities who experienced frequent discrimination were 2.3 times more likely than their low-discrimination counterparts to be smokers. This 5th grade reading-level scale takes 10 min to complete and has sufficient, initial psychometric integrity for use in clinical and community health studies.