# ind_items

secondary_title_index: social science &amp; medicine
title_index: what do we measure when we measure perceptions of everyday discrimination?
full_text_index:
       social science & medicine 292 (2022) 114609  contents lists available at sciencedirect  social science & medicine journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/socscimed  what do we measure when we measure perceptions of everyday discrimination? catherine e. harnois wake forest university, po box 7808, winston-salem, nc, 27103, usa  a r t i c l e i n f o  a b s t r a c t  keywords: discrimination qualitative methods question evaluation race gender  rationale: the everyday discrimination scale forms the backbone of hundreds of studies documenting the health effects of perceived discrimination. researchers regularly use the scale to examine specific types of discrimi nation (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender- and age-based) as well as discrimination more generally among the “general population.” to date, no study has analyzed the frameworks respondents use to interpret and answer the questions that comprise the scale. as such, what exactly researchers are measuring when they ask about “everyday discrimination” – and how this may vary within and across social groups – remains unknown. objective: this study analyzes data from cognitive interviews to assess patterns of interpretation and response to the eds to assess whether the meaning of the resulting data may vary across diverse social groups. methods: researchers conducted structured cognitive interviews with a diverse sample of thirty-eight adults in the southeastern united states (us). interview transcripts were qualitatively analyzed using maxqda, in a process of reiterative coding. results: results show that respondents interpret the survey questions in markedly different ways, with some interpreting the scale as asking about negative interactions; others viewing it through a lens of social inequalities; and still others through a lens specifically of racism. racial/ethnic and gender statuses may structure question interpretation. conclusions: pronounced and patterned variation in respondents’ interpretation raises questions about its val idity. findings underscore the importance of schemas for assessing the meaning of data generated by the eds and for measuring the health effects of perceived discrimination and mistreatment.  1. introduction  mohamed, 2009). alongside these important findings, researchers have also reported several counter-intuitive findings based on the scale. though many studies find that black respondents perceive everyday discrimination at higher rates than non-latinx white respondents (e.g., williams et al., 1997; lee and turney, 2012), others find similar levels of perceived discrimination across racial-ethnic groups (e.g., earnshaw et al., 2016; seng et al., 2012). data from the scale also often suggest that women perceive lower rates of discrimination than men (e.g., harnois and ifa tunji, 2011; earnshaw et al., 2016; lee and turney, 2012) and some studies suggest that perceptions of discrimination may take a greater toll on the health of non-latinx whites than on structurally disadvantaged racial and ethnic groups (barnes et al., 2008; williams et al., 1997). these findings, coupled with two recent psychometric studies showing the scale may lack psychometric equivalence across racialethnic, age, gender and education-based groups (bastos and harnois, 2018; harnois et al., 2019) raise the question of whether diverse social  “everyday discrimination” refers to the day-to-day indignities, microaggressions and other types of mistreatment that privileged groups enact towards members of disadvantaged groups (essed, 1991). the everyday discrimination scale (eds; williams et al., 1997) forms the backbone of hundreds of scholarly studies analyzing this type of discrimination. researchers regularly use the scale to examine specific types of discrimination (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender- and age-based) as well as discrimination more generally among the “general population” (e.g., brown et al., 2006; kessler et al., 1999; rodriguez, 2008; schulz et al., 2000). analyses of data based on the scale have shown consis tently that perceptions of discrimination remain high in the united states and that social groups differ in the frequency with which they perceive experiencing discrimination. there is also widespread consensus that high scores on the eds are linked to increased risk of poor health and wellbeing (pascoe and smart richman, 2009; williams and e-mail addresses: harnoice@wfu.edu, harnoice@wfu.edu.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114609 received 2 december 2020; received in revised form 13 august 2021; accepted 24 november 2021 available online 27 november 2021 0277-9536/ 2021 elsevier ltd. all rights reserved.  
  c.e. harnois  social science & medicine 292 (2022) 114609  groups may be interpreting the eds questions in different ways. the scale typically consists of ten questions, some of which are quite general (e.g., how often are you treated with less respect than other people? how often do people act as if they’re better than you are?). others, such as, “how often do people act as if they are afraid of you?” and “how often are you followed around in stores?” invoke stereotypes of black men and latinos and may be less appropriate for assessing the discrimination that other minoritized groups experience (harnois and ifatunji, 2011). moreover, while the name of the scale invokes discrimination, none of the survey questions refer to discrimination explicitly. it may be that some respondents understand the eds ques tions to be asking about general experiences of mistreatment, and not specifically about discrimination. to date, no study has analyzed the interpretive frameworks, or schemas, that respondents use to make sense of and answer the eds questions. as such, what exactly researchers are measuring when they ask about “everyday discrimination” – and the extent to which this varies within and across social groups – remains unknown. this study begins to fill this gap. analysis of cognitive interviews with thirty-eight adults from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, living in the south eastern united states (us), shows that participants interpret the eds questions in markedly different ways. patterns of interpretation may be linked to intersecting social sta tuses. among non-latinx white participants, a third interpret the scale as being about negative interactions; a third interpret it as asking about social inequalities, and a third interpret it as specifically about racism. in contrast, all of the racial-ethnic minority participants interpreted the scale as asking either about racism or social inequalities more generally. none understood it as merely about negative interpersonal interactions. racial-ethnic minority men were more likely to interpret the scale as asking about racism, and racial-ethnic minority women were more likely to interpret it as asking about social inequality. respondents’ interpre tive frameworks affect the information they retrieve when considering a response, and the answers they ultimately provide. pronounced varia tion in respondents’ interpretation of the scale raises questions about its validity across diverse social groups. these results highlight the importance of schemas for assessing the meaning of data already generated by the eds and for future studies assessing the effects of perceived discrimination and mistreatment.  table 1 the everyday discrimination scale. in your day-to-day life how often have any of the following things happened to you? (would you say almost every day, at least once a week, a few times a month a few times a year, or less than once a year?) 1. you are treated with less courtesy than other people. 2. you are treated with less respect than other people. 3. you receive poor service compared with other people at restaurants or stores. 4. people act as if they think you are not smart. 5. people act as if they are afraid of you. 6. people act as if they think you are dishonest. 7. people act as if they’re better than you are. 8. you are called names or insulted. 9. you are threatened or harassed. 10. you are followed around in stores. what do you think was the main reason for this/these experience(s)? would you say ... ? 1 – your ancestry or national origins 5 – your height or weight 2 – your gender 6 – your shade of skin color 3 – your race 7 – your sexual orientation 4 – your age 8 – your educational or employment background 11 – other (specify) ___________  source: williams et al. (2008).  treated as if you are dishonest; and being treated with a lack of courtesy– functioned differently among women of different racial-ethnic groups. reeve et al. (2011) also assessed the scale’s performance among a diverse sample. though they stopped short of analyzing differences across social groups, they found notable variation in question interpre tation and reported that respondents often interpreted the questions about receiving poor service and being called names or insulted as not asking about discrimination. recent studies grounded in intersectionality raise further questions about whether the scale works equally well and functions equivalently across diverse social groups. harnois and ifatunji (2011) and ifatunji and harnois (2016) examined the scales’ performance among african american women and men and concluded that the scale may better reflect black men’s experience of discrimination than black women’s. harnois et al. (2019) conducted a psychometric evaluation of the scale’s performance among a diverse sample of adults in texas, us, and concluded that it lacked equivalence across racial-ethnic, age, and education-based groups. bastos and harnois et al. (2020) extended this study with a national sample and found the scale performed differently across racial-ethnic, age and education-based groups. taken together, these studies raise questions about how respondents interpret the eds. how much variation in question interpretation is there? and, to the extent that variation exists, how is it structured and what are its potential consequences? answering these questions is important for several reasons. first, the eds is included in several largescale studies (e.g., the detroit area study; the national survey of american life; midlife in the united states). assessing how respondents understand the meaning of the eds questions is paramount for inter preting existing data generated from the scale. second, while numerous studies have found a significant association between perceptions of everyday discrimination and poor health, understanding how re spondents interpret and answer questions about everyday discrimina tion is vital for clarifying the more specific processes that undergird this general association (brown, 2001). third, researchers often analyze the causes, consequences, and prevalence of discrimination with the goal of creating a more just world (krieger, 2014). if research using the eds is to guide future policy and practices effectively, it is important to know whether survey respondents understand the questions in the way that researchers often assume they do. research on the cognitive aspects of survey response, in combination with social psychological research on schemas, provides a methodological and theoretical framework for analyzing patterns of interpretation.  2. background 2.1. the everyday discrimination sale in her qualitative study of racial inequality in the us and the netherlands, essed (1991) conceptualized “everyday racism” as the day-to-day indignities, microaggressions and other types of mistreat ment that black people disproportionately experience in societies structured by racial inequality. building off this important work, wil liams et al. (1997) developed the everyday discrimination scale (eds), presented in table 1. the scale focuses specifically on perceptions of interpersonal mistreatment, and an important limitation is that it cap tures structural discrimination only indirectly, in so far as it manifests in interpersonal interactions and is perceived by the respondent. regard less, the scale is among most commonly used instruments to assess discrimination and has been a key resource for researchers analyzing the social determinants of health disparities. psychometric studies of the eds show it performs well among racial and ethnic minority groups (e.g., kim et al., 2014; shariff-marco et al., 2011). as harnois et al. (2019) note, however, most evaluative studies have scale have focused on its performance within racial-ethnic minority groups. an important exception is lewis et al.’s (2012) analysis of dif ferential item functioning in the scale. drawing on a sample of women across five racial-ethnic groups, most of whom were middle class, they found that the scale performed well generally, but that three of the items – those about receiving poor service at restaurants or stores; being 2  
  c.e. harnois  social science & medicine 292 (2022) 114609  2.2. cognition & schemas in survey response  3. methods  the process of answering a survey question involves multiple steps on the part of respondents: interpreting the question; searching for relevant information; formulating an answer; considering the response options; and selecting a response (cannell et al., 1981; feldman, 1995; tourangeau and rasinski, 1999; tourangeau, lips and rasinski, 2000). numerous complexities lurk behind each of these steps. respondents’ interpretation of any specific question may be influenced by the pre ceding questions and the interpersonal dynamics of the interview. pre vious questions and response categories can prime respondents to interpret questions in specific ways, and can increase the salience of events, identities, or attitudes relevant for respondents’ subsequent an swers (clark and schober, 1994; tourangeau, 1999). when respondents interpret survey questions, they must also make judgments about the meaning of specific words and the broader “intent” of the survey, which can affect their interpretation of questions as well as their answers. the processes of retrieving information, formulating answers, and providing a response are all similarly complex involving, for example, re spondents’ navigating autobiographies; assessing time frames; assessing how their experiences, attitudes or beliefs fit within response categories; and considering the social desirability of their answers. these processes together occur in a matter of seconds and schemas play a key role throughout. schemas are socially shared organizing frameworks people use to understand the world around them, the specific elements they encounter, and the relationships among them (ridgeway, 2014). sche mas include consciously held beliefs as well as the taken-for-granted understandings that, in countless ways, influence people’s perceptions, beliefs and behavior. social psychological research shows that people always have multiple schemas available to them for understanding any particular phenomenon, including survey questions, and rely on whichever schema is most salient to them in the social context at hand. in the survey response process, respondents consider numerous types of information and cues to interpret the meaning of individual questions and the broader survey (zaller, 1992; zaller and feldman, 1992). the schema respondents use during the comprehension stage affects subse quent stages. as feldman (1995: 257–8) explains, “once an interpreta tion is activated, much of the variation in information search may be eliminated. information consistent with the interpretation is considered, inconsistent information is never examined.” indeed, research shows that people are most likely to remember information and events (e.g., instances of mistreatment) that are relevant to their schemas (markus et al., 1987; friedman, 2013). moreover, the activation of a schema for one survey question further heightens its salience and increases the likelihood of respondents using this interpretative framework for sub sequent survey questions. in other words, when a respondent interprets a survey question to be asking about a particular topic (correctly or incorrectly), their interpretation can spill over to subsequent survey questions, particularly if the content of the subsequent question coheres with their interpretation of the previous questions. some degree of variation in survey question interpretation is inevi table. but pronounced and patterned variation in question interpretation poses serious challenges for interpreting the resulting data (willis 2004, 2015). if respondents understand survey questions as asking about entirely different things, then their responses cannot be taken at face value. moreover, if diverse social groups tend to interpret survey ques tions in different ways – as asking about different things – then their answers are not directly comparable. moreover, if eds items are inter preted heterogeneously across social groups, then this may lead to dif ferential misclassification bias and inaccurate estimates of perceived discrimination and its association with health outcomes. assessing the extent of variation in question interpretation, as well as patterns of interpretation is crucial for analyzing how experiences and perceptions of discrimination impact the health and wellbeing across diverse social group.  i analyze data from thirty-eight cognitive interviews to assess pat terns of interpretation and response to the eds. cognitive interviews are an established method for evaluating question design and response problems. they provide insight into how respondents interpret and answer survey questions and can reveal whether interpretations differ across groups (willis 2004, 2015). small samples are common in these studies and research suggests that samples of even ten people can help identify problematic questions and response categories (demaio and rothgeb, 1996; willis, 2015). table 2 presents an overview of the 38 participants in the study. the names shown are pseudonyms, however, and potentially identifying details have been modified in some cases to ensure confidentiality. i recruited participants using a nonprobability convenience sampling strategy with intentional diversity with respect to gender, race, ethnicity, and educational attainment. interviews were conducted in the fall and winter of 2017 in the southeastern us, following irb approval from the author’s institution. i recruited participants primarily through fliers posted at libraries, stores, community centers and other public spaces. participants ranged in age from 21 to 74, with a mean age of 41. four identified as sexual minorities, others as straight or heterosexual. interviews were held in a private setting and most lasted between 60 and 120 min. participants received a 50 gift-card after completing the interview. those who identified as african american or black (n 16) were interviewed by a black woman, and those identifying as nonlatinx white (n 15) were interviewed by a white woman. selfdescribed asian (n 3) and hispanic/latinx (n 4) respondents were interviewed by either a black or white woman, depending upon interviewer availability. interviewers followed a structured interview guide and respondents seemed comfortable throughout. many expressed appreciation for having the opportunity to share their experiences. interviewers began by reading participants a script thanking them for their participation, describing the structure of the interview and the goal of the study: “we’re testing a questionnaire with the help of people such as yourself. i’ll ask you questions, and you answer them, just like in a regular survey. however, our goal here is to get a better idea of how the questions in the survey are working ...” interviewers asked several background questions and then administered the eds. after the eds was administered, interviewers administered the major experiences of discrimination scale (meds) (williams et al., 2008). structured retro spective probing followed, wherein participants were asked a series of open-ended questions about their understanding of each individual survey question (e.g., can you tell me in your own words what the question is asking? what do you think this question is trying to get at?), as well as their experiences (e.g., can you tell me more about the times this has happened to you?). interviews were recorded with a digital voice recorder and professionally transcribed. i analyzed the interviews through a reiterative process of inductive coding, consistent with grounded theory (strauss and corbin, 1990). i read through interview transcripts multiple times, and each time used maxqda to apply short descriptive codes to small portions of text. these initial codes defined what was happening in each piece of data – for example, the topics and events they mentioned, the level of certainty or uncertainty they expressed, the tone they used, and the questions they asked. after the initial coding, i conducted more focused and theoretical coding, organizing the descriptive codes into groups, and identify emerging themes within and across interviews. these codes provided a foundation for the emerging theory (charmaz, 2006). in the process of identifying themes and patterns within and across the interviews, i saw three distinct groups in how participants made sense of the survey questions, each using different interpretational lens, or schema. the present study focuses solely on respondents’ answers to, and narratives about, the eds. the restricted scope of investigation is in part due to space limitations, but also because the wording and structure of the two scales differs dramatically, with the meds asking about more 3  
  c.e. harnois  social science & medicine 292 (2022) 114609  table 2 interviewee characteristics and schemas. louise anita trayonna joti meghan sherri briana robin aaron victor neil ricardo sasha tanya tamika william michael ben jose stephen carlos rebecca alicia mary olive robert toby kenneth ian jason linda jill janet john scott marianne nancy lilly  main reason as reported in eds  eds score  schema  gender  education  age  race/ethnicity  race gender education/employment other other height/weight age race race education/employment national origin not applicable race race race race race race other ancestry skin color other not applicable age other n/a other other n/a height/weight gender other other other other height/weight other other  1.6 1.1 2.2 1 1.3 1.3 3.7 2.3 3.8 2.6 1.1 1.0 2.1 3.2 3.4 3.3 1.4 1.7 1.5 3.7 1.5 1.1 1.0 2.3 2.1 1 1.7 2.3 1 1.4 1.4 2.2 2.4 1.1 2.1 1.4 2.3 1.4  social inequalities social inequalities social inequalities social inequalities social inequalities social inequalities social inequalities social inequalities social inequalities social inequalities social inequalities social inequalities racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism racism negative interactions negative interactions negative interactions negative interactions negative interactions social inequalities social inequalities social inequalities social inequalities social inequalities racism racism racism racism racism  woman woman woman woman woman woman woman woman man man man man woman woman woman man man man man man man woman woman woman woman man man man man man woman woman woman man man woman woman woman  high school master’s master’s master’s bachelor’s master’s bachelor’s high school high school bachelor’s master’s high school master’s bachelor’s high school ged high school bachelor’s ged associate’s bachelor’s master’s bachelor’s bachelor’s bachelor’s high school high school bachelor’s master’s bachelor’s high school master’s high school bachelor’s master’s master’s high school master’s  50s 30s 30s 20s 20s 60s 20s 20s 20s 20s 30s 60s 50s 20s 20s 50s 70s 50s 40s 40s 20s 40s 70s  black/multicultural hispanic african american asian african american african american african american asian black african american asian hispanic african american african american black african american black black hispanic black latino african american african american  acute instances of discrimination such as being unfairly fired or denied a promotion. patterns of interpretation likely differ for the two scales. because respondents were administered the eds prior to the meds, the closed-ended responses to the eds questions are unaffected by the administration of the meds. the administration of the meds likely heightened some respondents’ awareness of discrimination and inequality, and likely influenced respondents’ narratives during the retrospective-probing. importantly, any priming effect the meds may have had did not countervail the significant variation in respondents’ interpretation of the eds questions. and, despite this potential priming, some respondents nonetheless interpreted the eds as unrelated to inequality or discrimination, as illustrated below.  50s 50s 70s 30s 20s 50s 20s 50s 30s 30s 20s 50s 40s 20s 30s  white white white white white white white white white white white white white white white  experiences reveal significant variation in how participants interpreted the questions. i describe these interpretations as “schemas” because they reflect the process through which participants, guided by their bi ographies as well as cultural and contextual cues, interpret individual questions and understand them as a whole. negative interactions. five respondents, all of whom identified as nonlatinx and white, interpreted the eds as a survey of idiosyncratic negative interactions. when recounting their experiences of “everyday discrimination” they described a grab-bag of experiences: feeling left out of cliques at work; receiving poor service from overworked waitstaff; road rage; and encounters with “rude” people. when asked what they thought these questions were trying to get at, and to rephrase the questions in their own words, they struggled because the questions seemed so straightforward: “it’s just asking you how you’re treated in your day-to-day life; ” “i think you are trying to find out, but how are you respected.” when reflecting on the intent of the survey questions, re spondents who used a negative interactions schema did not typically invoke social statuses, identities, or systems of inequality. one man in this group interpreted the survey as a psychological test of “perceptions versus reality,” but the others in this group took the questions at facevalue. this group includes robert, a wealthy white man in his 70s with a high school degree, who maintained a jocular tone throughout the interview and who reported no experiences with mistreatment. at the other end of the spectrum is olive, a white mother of four with a bachelor’s degree, who reported being treated with a lack of courtesy and being given poor service “at least once a week.” she recounted a range of negative experiences but did not view these through lens of inequality. she described feeling looked down upon frequently when  4. results respondents interpreted the eds questions on the whole in one of three distinct ways, that is, using one of three different schemas. five participants – all non-latinx white – understood the eds as asking about idiosyncratic negative interactions; sixteen participants interpreted the questions as asking about social inequalities; and seventeen interpreted the questions as asking specifically about racism. non-latinx white participants were distributed evenly throughout these groups, while racial-ethnic minority participants were distributed approximately evenly between the latter two. notably, eight of the thirteen racialethnic minority women interpreted the scale as being about social inequality, and six of the ten racial-ethnic minority men thought it specifically about racism. in general, respondents included a wide range of experiences when sharing their experiences of “everyday discrimi nation.” their reflections on the eds and narratives of their own 4  
  c.e. harnois  social science & medicine 292 (2022) 114609  shopping at high-end grocery stores and explained that she and her son, who has down’s syndrome and physical challenges, are treated badly and given substandard care at hospitals. when asked to say more about her experiences of people acting as though they were afraid of her, she discussed her son whom she regularly threatens, lightheartedly, to hit with a wooden spoon. robert aside, all of the respondents in this group discussed some negative experiences, but none interpreted these experiences, or the questions themselves, as connected to inequality or discrimination. mary, a college-educated white woman in her fifties who discusses feeling left out of cliques at work, identified age as the main reason for her mistreatment, but explicitly rejected the idea that these cliques are discriminatory: “they are not discriminating against me, it’s just, you know, it’s you’re on two different playing fields, i guess.” for re spondents in this group, severe and consequential experiences of mistreatment were lumped together alongside experiences that re spondents characterized as “not taken personally” and easily dismissed. social inequalities. a third of non-latinx white participants and 45% of racial-ethnic minority participants interpreted the eds questions through a schema of social inequalities – they understood the questions as asking about the types of mistreatment that socially disadvantaged groups experience disproportionately, and, in so doing, linked the questions to multiple forms of social inequality. like participants with a schema of negative interactions, these participants also discussed some isolated negative encounters (e.g., receiving poor service by overworked cashiers; being treated disrespectfully by housemates when playing the drums in the house). what distinguishes the participants in this group from those with a schema of negative interactions is that, when reflecting on the survey questions and their experiences, partici pants with a schema of social inequalities interpreted the eds as also including experiences of racism, sexism, homophobia, agism, and other social inequalities. they named these inequalities explicitly, and also spoke of “bias,” “prejudice,” “stereotypes,” and “discrimination.” understanding that mistreatment based on structural inequalities are fundamentally different from day-to-day negative interactions, and un sure about the intent of the survey, several participants in this group openly struggled with question interpretation. among the clearest ex amples is ian, a self-described white gay man in his 50s who holds a graduate degree. ian interrupted the administration of the eds after the first question to ask for clarification: interviewer: in your day-to-day life, how often are you treated with less courtesy than other people? and the options are: almost every day, at least once a week, a few times a month, a few times a year, or less than once a year? ian: less than once a year. and ... interviewer: please. ian: do you want to ... will you go back through those and i’ll tell you what i was thinking on that, because ... interviewer: yes, but if there’s anything you want to add right now, that’s fine, too. ian: so, is this courtesy in respect to my being gay, or is it courtesy, you know [...] you know, i’m working with the public, some people are courteous, and some people aren’t, and it has nothing to do with me, or at least i choose to believe it doesn’t. interviewer: right. so, i think that it’s a great question and at this point, i would just say however you interpret that question is the right answer. [...] ian: okay. i’ll stick with my answer. when asked what came to mind when they were listening to each of the eds questions, respondents with a schema of inequalities mentioned numerous inequalities. when asked what the question, “how often are you treated with less courtesy than other people” was trying to get at, robin who is in her 20s, holds a high school degree and describes herself as asian and at points in the interview, vietnamese-american, said, “i think it’s asking has anyone ever treated you unfairly on the basis of your race, religion, sexual orientation, those sorts of things.” when  asked what came to her mind when listening to the question about being “threatened or harassed,” linda, a white high school educated lesbian in her 50s, responded, “well, it could be gender, but it could also be na tional origin [...] it could be cultural background. race for some people, it wouldn’t be for me, but if another person were being asked these questions.” when asked to reflect on the scale overall, meghan, a black woman in her 20s with a bachelor’s degree, said “racial discrimination. class discrimination, bias, prejudice, sexism.” racism. approximately half of racial-ethnic minority respondents, as well as a third of white respondents interpreted the eds through a schema of racism: they interpreted the questions as asking about the interactions and judgements that create and maintain racial inequality, and the oppression of black people in particular. when asked what they thought the questions were asking about, they focused on race and to a lesser extent ethnicity and nationality. they only occasionally mentioned other forms of inequality (women occasionally mentioned gender, and men, class) and idiosyncratic negative interactions. when sasha, an african american woman in her 50s who holds a master’s degree, was asked what she thought the question on being treated with less respect than other people was about, she replied, “it’s trying to see if you were discriminated against based on your color of your skin. that’s what all these questions are trying to figure out.” marianne, a white woman in her 40s with a master’s degree, reports being treated with a lack of courtesy “a few times a month,” but explains that when this happens to her, it is “because [service workers] are tired and they are ready to go home.” she thinks this question and the survey more generally may be getting at something different, however: “most of [the questions] seemed geared towards discrimination, if you have been discriminated against or racially profiled and that type of thing.” when asked to reflect on the question about “being given poor service compared to other people in restaurants or stores” michael, a black man in his 40s with a high school degree said, “it seems like it’s asking me if maybe ... maybe people of ... you know, people of different national backgrounds or ethnic origins overall, you know, if they get treated different from each other, you know, based on, you know, race, and possibly gender and background.” reflecting on the survey more generally, he says “i would probably say the questions were somehow trying to allude to maybe, you know, the black person’s experience overall. maybe.” 4.1. schemas and survey data how do the schemas that respondents use to interpret the eds questions influence the resulting data? findings suggest that re spondents’ schemas influence not only how they interpret the questions, but also act as “filters” (friedman, 2013) through which they sort through their experiences, formulate answers, and select formal re sponses. how and to what extent respondents’ use of differing schemas affects the resulting data is contingent upon what researchers are trying to measure when they use the eds: perceived “mistreatment” or perceived “discrimination.” measuring mistreatment. when reporting their experiences, nonlatinx white respondents who used a schema of negative interactions filtered out few (if any) of their experiences of mistreatment. as described above, these respondents provided answers that reflected their experiences with tired service workers, impatient co-workers, and rude people. respondents who use a schema of negative interactions interpret the eds as asking about mistreatment in general, so their re sponses are in-line with the measure when it is used in this way. respondents who used a schema of social inequalities or racism however, often minimized and in some cases discounted experiences that they perceived as non-discriminatory. recall ian, who interrupted the survey after the first question to clarify the intent of the survey, and who then concluded that the survey was asking about social inequalities. ian originally reported that he never had any of the experiences mentioned in the eds. reflecting on his answers later in the interview, 5  
  c.e. harnois  social science & medicine 292 (2022) 114609  he explained that his response of “less than once a year” for all eds items, which he subsequently changed to “never,” was guided by his belief that the survey was trying to get at his perceptions of “discrimi nation” due to his being gay. the interviewer followed-up with him on this in the retrospective portion of the interview: interviewer: right. so, let me just make sure that i’m understanding this correctly. when you said you’re treated with less courtesy than other people less than once a year ... that’s what you said. ian: really, never. interviewer: really, never. that’s right because we moved it. ian: yeah, because it’s based on discrimination. interviewer: right. and if it weren’t based on discrimination then it ... ian: it’s every day. interviewer: then it would be every day. ian: isn’t it funny? that’s because i see a hundred people a day or more and some just aren’t courteous people. ian’s response of “never” for all everyday discrimination questions is based on his interpretation of the questions as asking about social in equalities, and discrimination specifically. the only disadvantaged identity he holds is his sexuality and, since he does not perceive expe riencing homophobia, he answers “never” to all of the eds questions. but he works with the public, encounters rude clients daily, and in dicates that his answer would be the polar opposite, “every day,” if he were to include those experiences in his response. though he perceives mistreatment every day, his responses to the eds suggest that he per ceives no mistreatment, and the discrepancy is explained by the schema through which he interpret the questions. the responses of john, a white heterosexual graduate student in his 20s who used a schema racism, show a similar pattern of response. when asked, “in your day-to-day life, how often do people act as if they are better than you are?” he first indicates that it happens regularly, “that’s part of the game in grad school, i guess.” but when providing his formal response, backs away dramatically: “but less than once a year.” both john and ian discount their perceptions of “mistreatment” because they believe the survey is about “discrimination.” john, who views it as asking specifically about racial discrimination, in fact ex presses discomfort with the entire survey, asking “can i ask you a question? i’m just curious ... in what situation is this survey being ... what is the target population for the original survey? can you say that, or no?” these responses illustrate how schemas affect not only question interpretation, but also information retrieval and evaluation. consistent with schwarz’s (1999) theory of question response, both john and ian consider the intent of the survey, including what they imagine the intended audience to be, during the response process. racial and ethnic minority respondents struggled less with the intended audience of the survey, because all identified with at least one disadvantaged group and understood the questions as about either racism or social inequalities more broadly. estimates of mistreatment may be biased downward for racial and ethnic minority groups too, however. all respondents who interpreted the questions through a schema of racism or inequalities minimized, qualified or discounted some of the experiences they viewed as routine negative interactions unrelated to their own status or identity, likely resulting in deflated estimates of perceived “mistreatment.” measuring discrimination. for the five non-latinx white respondents who used a schema of negative interactions, the scale provides inflated estimates of perceived discrimination. none of the respondents in this group indicated that they had experienced “discrimination,” but their responses to the survey suggest otherwise. in contrast, for those re spondents who interpreted it through a framework of racism, the scale likely provides deflated estimates of discrimination. the retrospective probing revealed that several respondents who believed the scale was focusing on racism filtered out other forms of discrimination, particu larly for non-latinx whites, but also for racial-ethnic minority re spondents who focused on the racism they experienced more so than discrimination based on age, class, gender and other social statuses.  one such example is lilly, a non-latinx white woman in her thirties who holds a graduate degree, and who interpreted the survey through a schema of racism. she indicated that the focus on racism, and to some extent sexual orientation, made her uncomfortable reporting her own experiences: the whole survey, to me, just made me think more of sexual orien tation and race, i guess. and maybe socioeconomic status. so, then you almost feel guilty for bringing that in. if that makes sense. ... so, you may not answer it. because you’re like, well, in the whole grand scheme of things, no one’s ever thrown a brick through my window or done any kind of terrible ... so, you might just, by the end of it, you’re ... [...] i might not answer that truthfully because i’m like, well, my life’s pretty good, so ... lilly’s response exhibits her discomfort with the survey and her struggle to provide a socially desirable answer while staying true to her perceptions and beliefs. for her and other non-latinx white respondents with a racism schema, the issue of racism and their own racial identities were salient when interpreting the scale and providing answers. their answers likely reflect, at least in part, their desire to present themselves as non-racists. for those with a schema of negative interactions, the survey had nothing to do with race or racism, so social desirability was less of a consideration. respondents’ schema thus likely influences the degree of socially desirability bias. respondents who used a schema of social inequalities had the highest cognitive burden during the survey because they interpreted each question as potentially dealing with a range of social inequalities as well as other forms of mistreatment. their consideration of multiple inequalities meant that they had more information to process compared to those with schemas of negative interactions (who primarily consid ered mistreatment and not discrimination) and those with a schema of racism (who primarily considered racism, but not other forms of inequality). because they interpreted the questions as asking about a range of possibilities, including but not limited to racism, they interpreted some survey questions in unforeseen ways. this is particularly true for two of the survey questions that hint at racial stereotypes (i.e., people acting as if they are afraid of you; you are followed around in stores) and the question asking about experiences of being threatened or harassed. two women and one man with a schema of social inequalities interpreted the question about being followed around in stores as about gender-based stalking. respondents with a racism schema, in contrast, uniformly interpreted this question as about asking about racial profiling of african americans. similarly, those with a schema of inequalities often inter preted “being threatened or harassed” as about sexual harassment. though sexual harassment could well indeed be a component of everyday discrimination, the lack of specificity in the question wording leaves it open to a range of interpretations. the survey question about people acting as if they are afraid of you also solicited a wide range of interpretations and responses, particularly among non-latinx white women. several women balked when asked about how often people act as if they were afraid of them. mary, described earlier, who interpreted the questions through a schema of negative interactions, reflected, “oh lord. i was just like who would be afraid of me? that’s so funny. that’s a funny question. i’m pretty harmless.” jill, described earlier, also reports never having this experience. she discusses numerous experiences with inequality in the course of her interview and thinks many of the questions touch on race, ethnicity, age, socio-economic status and gender. she interprets her bad experiences as stemming from stereotypes about her as a small-framed, young-looking white woman. she links these statuses to her being disrespected, over looked, and not taken seriously by a range of people including service workers, clients, and also her husband, noting that if people were afraid of her, they might also treat her with more respect: 6  
  c.e. harnois  social science & medicine 292 (2022) 114609  well, people get treated probably with a little bit more respect and dignity if others think that they have some kind of authority or some reason to fear them or there could be consequences. and again, that’s why i feel like perhaps we get treated a little bit better when you’re with a man or with your husband because he is very self-assured and confident and perhaps they think that he’s ... there could be con sequences to treating him poorly. [...]  are accurately understood (schober, 1999). nonetheless, respondents generally proceed with the “presumption of interpretability” (i.e., the presumption that their understanding of the question is the right one), interpreting subsequent questions as related – unless explicitly told otherwise (clark and schober, 1994:40), with each successive question solidifying the schema and potentially heightening its influence over the survey response process and the resulting data. what this study suggests is that respondents’ quest for structure in the context of the eds may be guided by their understanding and knowledge of racism and other systems of inequality. ian and john’s direct questions about the intent of the survey illustrate the difficulty of this quest amidst the eds questions that hint at (in their minds) – but do not explicitly invoke – discrimination. respondents who used a schema of negative interactions had an easier quest, as they interpreted the questions at face value, and did not interpret them as asking specifically about discrimination or as relating to any particular social group. re spondents’ knowledge and understanding of social inequalities seems to have equipped them with different resources along their quest, leading them to interpret the questions in fundamentally different ways.  jill views her experiences as rooted in intersecting social statuses and interprets many of these experiences as “discrimination.” in the context of the eds, however, jill’s response that people act as if they are afraid of her “less than once a year,” conveys exactly the opposite of what researchers often assume. jill would prefer people to treat her with more fear— as if ignoring her had consequences. 5. discussion & conclusion questions that solicit valid and reliable answers are the cornerstone of survey research (sirken et al., 1999). high quality measures of discrimination are vital for documenting discrimination as experienced by a range of groups, and for addressing its negative consequences for individual health and well-being and for health disparities (brown, 2001; williams, neighbors and jackson, 2003). comparative analyses of the everyday discrimination experienced by diverse social groups rest on the assumption that the scale works well, and measures the same un derlying construct, across these groups (harnois et al., 2019). this study demonstrates significant and potentially patterned vari ation in how respondents interpret eds question items: non-latinx white participants are evenly divided among schemas of negative in teractions, social inequalities and racism. racial-ethnic minority par ticipants are divided between social inequalities and racism schemas, with women somewhat over-represented in the former, and men in the latter. this finding, though preliminary, supports the claim of inter sectionality theorists who argue that race and gender are intertwined systems of inequality which together, and with other systems of inequality, shape peoples’ perceptions and beliefs (bowleg, 2008; har nois, 2015). not all participants who used a schema of social inequalities described themselves as having multiple disadvantaged statuses, but those who understand themselves as members of multiple minority groups may be better structurally positioned to see the eds questions as tapping mistreatment stemming from multiple hierarchies. results show that respondents use schemas not only to make sense of what the eds questions “are getting at,” but also as a filter to sift through their experiences and decide what information is relevant to the ques tion at hand. schemas also influence their considerations of social desirability, and the response category participants ultimately select. while further research with larger samples is necessary, findings suggest that variation in schemas creates variation in the meaning of the resulting data, and may be a source of bias, particularly in research using the eds to draw comparisons across social groups. while the distribu tion of schemas identified in the present study is not generalizable to a broader population, the degree and structure of interpretations found here suggests that there may be significant patterned variation in how respondents interpret and answer the eds questions. in addition to its contributions for measuring everyday discrimina tion, this study advances scholarship on the cognitive aspects of survey research (casm) and underscores its importance for asking questions about experiences of mistreatment and discrimination. clark and schober (1994; 39–40) describe survey respondents as being on a “quest for structure” as they make their way through survey questions. in typical interactions, people draw on a range of context clues and conversational strategies to establish common meaning with their in terlocutors. in the context of a formal closed-ended survey, however, where one person does all the asking and another does all the answering, respondents have a drastically reduced toolkit for ensuring that they understand what is being asked and for ensuring that they themselves  5.1. weaknesses and future directions this study is the first to assess the schemas respondents use to make sense of the eds, and the conclusions are necessarily preliminary. several additional limitations are of note. first, the sample size is small, and participants represent a nonprobability sample from a single geographical area, at a specific and arguably unusual cultural-historical moment in the us. the findings are generalizable neither to a larger population nor to a more general period of time. a change in geographic or historical context might affect the salience of particular issues or identities for respondents, and in turn affect the schemas they use to interpret the scale questions. the sample size links to a second limitation, which is the inability to examine fully differences among racial-ethnic minority groups and how intersecting systems of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality set the stage for question interpretation and response. intersectionality theory (baca zinn and thornton dill, 1996; collins, 2000) emphasizes that all people hold multiple social statuses and identities, and empirical intersectionality scholarship demonstrates that these identities and statuses work together to shape not only experiences and opportunities, but also perceptions and beliefs (bowleg, 2008; harnois, 2015). results strongly support the idea of interpretational differences across race and ethnicity, as non-latinx white respondents (including men and women) were the only racial-ethnic group to view the scale through a schema of negative interactions. but other social statuses almost certainly contribute to respondents’ interpretations, and future research with larger samples is needed to clarify these linkages. participation in the study was restricted to those who could speak english, and it is likely that people who do not speak english have vastly different experiences with discrimination and might also understand a translated scale in still different ways. a related limitation is that in terviewers who interviewed asian and hispanic participants were not themselves asian or hispanic. though these participants did seem comfortable discussing numerous instances of mistreatment, they may have under-reported their experiences because of this discrepancy (barnes et al., 2008). finally, as is the case with all social science research, the particulars of the research question, study design, analysis, and interpretation are inevitably shaped by the social location of the researchers involved (harding, 1987). replications and extensions of this study, undertaken by researchers of diverse social locations are needed to assess the robustness of its conclusions. despite these limitations, the findings underscore the need for scholars to exercise caution when interpreting data from the eds, as its meaning may be both more varied and more ambiguous than previously assumed. a combination of socio-demographic, social-psychological, and experiential factors likely set the stage for interpreting the survey 7  
  c.e. harnois  social science & medicine 292 (2022) 114609  through different schemas. further research is needed to identify how specific factors combine to shape question interpretation, and the degree of bias that these different interpretations may introduce. moving forward, how might researchers modify the eds to ensure a greater uniformity in question interpretation and ease the cognitive burden on respondents? the answer depends on their goals for using the scale. if the goal of using the scale is to assess all forms of mistreatment, including negative interactions that respondents perceive as uncon nected to prejudice and discrimination, then this could be easily clari fied in the question stem. for example, by specifying, “we’re interested to know about how often the following things have happened to you, regardless of the underlying reason. in your day-to-day life how often have any of the following things happened to you?” this would help clarify for all respondents that they should include all of their experi ences of mistreatment and not minimize any. if, however, the scale is meant to assess perceptions of racialized mistreatment, then a potential way forward would be to make this clear in the question, for example by asking, “have you been treated with less respect than other people because of your race or ethnicity?” this modi fication was tested in the 2007 california health interview survey and research by shariff-marco et al. (2011) shows that the question wording significantly affects respondents’ answers. the proportion of non-latinx white respondents who indicated that they have had experiences of everyday discrimination shrank dramatically when the question speci fied “because of your race or ethnicity.” the proportion of african american respondents who indicated that they had had experiences of everyday discrimination stayed relatively unchanged (0.852 v 0.827; p  0.05), but the proportion of other racial and ethnic minority groups shrank as well (though not as much as for non-latinx white respondents). while certainly clarifying, williams and mohammed (2009) explain that asking directly about racial-ethnic mistreatment may also introduce minimization bias, as respondents may try to frame their experiences as something stemming from something other than race or ethnicity. indeed, in shariff-marco et al.‘s analysis, 85.2% of african american participants reported having at least one experience of everyday discrimination when they were asked about their general experiences with mistreatment. when further asked about the main reason for this mistreatment, only 52.9% attributed this to race or ethnicity. in contrast, when the language of race and ethnicity was integrated into the question itself, 82.7% of african american respondents indicated that they had had at least one experience of everyday racial-ethnic discrimination. an additional challenge with this specifying race and ethnicity in the question itself is that experiences of racial and ethnic discrimination are often intertwined with other forms of discrimination. harnois, bastos and shariff-marco (2020) found that respondents with multiple disadvantaged statuses often find it difficult, if not impossible, to attribute the everyday discrimination they experience to a single so cial status (see also bowleg, 2008). if the scale is meant to tap all forms of discrimination, the path forward may be even more challenging. one approach, put forth recently by scheim and bauer (2019), is to ask respondents about the negative experiences they have encountered “because of who you are” – potentially enabling a broader assessment of discriminatory experiences based on any social status or identity or combination thereof. but this approach may also have significant drawbacks too. for one, the types of discriminatory experiences that diverse social groups experience can vary dramatically. compiling a list of discriminatory experiences that encompasses the unique forms of discrimination that all minoritized groups experience may be impossible. second, it is not clear whether respondents will interpret the language of “because of who you are” to refer to the social statuses and identities that social scientists typically link with discrimination. respondents in the current study discussed mistreatment due to political ideology, tattoos, stature, fashion style, among other things which could all be included in the framework of “who you are.” further, scheim and bauer’s approach does not ask  respondents to identify a reason (or reasons) for their mistreatment, leaving researchers to guess whether respondents understand their mistreatment as stemming from any particular identity or identities (harnois and bastos, 2019). 6. conclusions research on the cognitive aspects of survey methodology demon strates that constructing valid and reliable survey instruments is a difficult task. researchers working to develop and refine scales of perceived everyday discrimination face an especially large set of chal lenges. on the one hand, discriminatory practices vary widely when directed at different social groups, and also vary across institutional, social, economic, historical and political contexts. compiling a repre sentative list of discriminatory experiences that reflects this multifac eted variation may be impossible. on the other hand, more general questions about differential treatment are subject to a range of in terpretations, as illustrated here. whether it is possible to refine the eds, or to develop a new scale that successfully navigates these challenges remains unknown. but successfully navigating these challenges is vital for research examining the role discrimination plays in sustaining social inequalities and health disparities. declaration of competing interest none. acknowledgments this project was supported by a visiting international fellowship in research methodology at the university of surrey (united kingdom), the wake forest university pilot research grant program and wake forest university humanities institute with support made possible by a major grant from the national endowment for the humanities. i thank brian powell, heather barnes, robert freeland, matthew andersson, and joa o luiz bastos for their feedback. references baca zinn, m., thornton dill, b., 1996. theorizing difference from multiracial feminism. fem. stud. 22 (2), 321–331. barnes, l.l., de leon, 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secondary_title_index: canadian journal of public health
title_index:
       factorial invariance of the everyday discrimination scale among african, caribbean, black, and other racialized women living with and without hiv in british columbia, canada     

full_text_index:
       canadian journal of public health (2025) 116:219–230 https://doi.org/10.17269/s41997-024-00966-7  special section on hiv, health, and black canadian communities: original article  factorial invariance of the everyday discrimination scale among african, caribbean, black, and other racialized women living with and without hiv in british columbia, canada charity v. mudhikwa1,2,3 · joao l. bastos1 · notisha massaquoi4 · allison carter1,5,6 · patience magagula7 · elizabeth m. king1,2,3 · helene c. f. cote2,8,9,10 · melanie c. m. murray2,3,9,10,11 · angela kaida1,2 received: 16 may 2024 / accepted: 1 october 2024 / published online: 2 december 2024  the author(s) under exclusive license to the canadian public health association 2024  abstract objectives the everyday discrimination scale (eds) assesses the mistreatment racialized people experience daily. it is widely used in canadian hiv research to measure racial discrimination among african, caribbean, and/or black (acb), and other racialized women. however, no studies have examined whether the eds provides valid estimates of racial discrimination that are objectively comparable across racial/ethnic groups or by hiv status in canada. we aimed to address this gap. methods we analyzed eds data from the british columbia carma-chiwos collaboration study of self-identifying women 16 years of age living with and without hiv. we conducted confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) by race/ethnicity (acb; indigenous; other racialized; white) and also by hiv status to assess validity and reliability of the eds within these groups. next, we ran multigroup-cfa (mcfa) to determine whether the eds measures the same construct to the same extent across race/ethnicity- and hiv status-based groups. results of 504 participants (202 with hiv), 62 were acb, 152 indigenous, 90 other racialized, and 200 white. cfa revealed adequate fit within race/ethnicity- and hiv status-based groups—all cronbach’s alpha 0.9, factor loadings 0.6, and acceptable fit indices, except for root mean square error of approximation. residual correlations 0.4 suggested redundancy between some item pairs. in the mcfa, the eds was invariant across groups. conclusion the eds provides racial discrimination estimates that are meaningfully comparable across race/ethnicity- and hiv status-based groups. despite potential redundancy between item pairs that may warrant refinement, the eds can be included in survey instruments that aim to examine and compare the prevalence and health impacts of racial discrimination among acb and other racialized women in canada.  * angela kaida angela_kaida@sfu.ca  6  1  australian human rights institute, the university of new south wales, sydney, australia  faculty of health sciences, simon fraser university, burnaby, bc, canada  7  2  afro-canadian positive network of british columbia, surrey, bc, canada  women’s health research institute, british columbia women’s hospital and health centre, vancouver, bc, canada  8  department of pathology and laboratory medicine, university of british columbia, vancouver, bc, canada  3  oak tree clinic, british columbia women’s hospital and health centre, vancouver, bc, canada  9  centre for blood research, university of british columbia, vancouver, bc, canada  4  department of health and society, university of toronto, scarborough, on, canada  10  edwin s.h. leong healthy aging program , university of british columbia, vancouver, bc, canada  5  kirby institute, the university of new south wales, sydney, australia  11  faculty of medicine, university of british columbia, vancouver, bc, canada  vol.:(0123456789)  
  220  canadian journal of public health (2025) 116:219–230  resume objectifs l’echelle de discrimination dans la vie de tous les jours (edvtj) evalue les mauvais traitements que les personnes racisees vivent au quotidien. c’est un instrument largement utilise dans les etudes canadiennes sur le vih pour mesurer la discrimination raciale a l’endroit des femmes des communautes africaine, caribeenne et noire (acn) et des autres femmes racisees. aucune etude n’avait encore toutefois cherche a savoir si l’edvtj fournit des estimations valables de la discrimination raciale pour effectuer des comparaisons objectives entre des groupes raciaux/ethniques ou vivant avec/sans le vih au canada. nous avons voulu combler cette lacune. methode nous avons analyse les donnees de l’edvtj dans l’etude british columbia carma-chiwos collaboration, menee aupres de personnes de 16 ans et plus s’identifiant comme femmes et vivant avec ou sans le vih. nous avons effectue une analyse factorielle confirmatoire (afc) par race/ethnicite (femmes acn; femmes autochtones; autres femmes racisees; femmes blanches) et selon l’etat serologique relativement au vih afin d’evaluer la validite et la fiabilite de l’edvtj dans ces groupes. ensuite, nous avons effectue une analyse factorielle confirmatoire multigroupe (afcmg) pour determiner si l’edvtj mesure la meme construction dans les memes proportions dans les groupes raciaux/ethniques et vivant avec/sans le vih. resultats sur les 504 participantes (202 ayant le vih), 62 etaient acn, 152 etaient autochtones, 90 appartenaient a d’autres groupes racises et 200 etaient blanches. l’afc a revele une bonne adequation dans les groupes raciaux/ethniques et dans les groupes vivant avec/sans le vih: coefficient alpha de cronbach 0,9, saturation 0,6 et indices d’ajustement acceptables, sauf pour la racine carree de l’erreur quadratique moyenne d’approximation. des correlations residuelles 0,4 sont signe de redondance entre certaines paires. dans l’afcmg, l’edvtj etait invariante d’un groupe a l’autre. conclusion l’edvtj fournit des estimations de la discrimination raciale utilement comparables dans les groupes raciaux/ ethniques et vivant avec/sans le vih. malgre la redondance potentielle entre certaines paires, qui pourrait justifier des ameliorations, l’edvtj peut etre incluse dans les instruments de sondage qui visent a examiner et a comparer la prevalence et les effets sur la sante de la discrimination raciale chez les femmes acn et les autres femmes racisees au canada. keywords racial discrimination · factorial invariance · racism and health · everyday discrimination scale · psychometric analysis · hiv · black health mots‐cles discrimination raciale · invariance factorielle · effets du racisme sur la sante · echelle de discrimination dans la vie de tous les jours · analyse psychometrique · vih · sante des personnes noires  introduction everyday racial discrimination can be defined as the seemingly minor but chronic indignities experienced daily by racialized people (pascoe & richman, 2009). this refers to experiences such as receiving poorer service in restaurants because of one’s race or experiencing increased suspicion from others. in canada, racialized people experience high levels of racial discrimination, with a 2019 survey revealing that 53% of indigenous and 54% of black people reported race-based discrimination. south asian, chinese, and other racialized groups also reported significant levels of discrimination (35%, 36%, and 32%, respectively) (neuman, 2019). an ontario study reported that in the past year, six of every ten african, caribbean, and/or black (acb) participants experienced everyday racial discrimination (husbands et al., 2022). while individually, encounters of everyday racial discrimination may appear trivial and inconsequential, a growing body of literature suggests that the chronic nature of these experiences yields a form of consistent stress that is associated with poor health outcomes  among black and other racialized communities, including depressive symptoms (cenat et al., 2021), cardiovascular disease (wyatt et al., 2003), and hypertension (dolezsar et al., 2014). with this growing recognition of the prevalence of everyday racial discrimination and its role in the unequal distribution of poor health outcomes among racialized populations in canada, there is a need for reliable and valid instruments to measure it. originally developed in 1997 within a sample of black adults from the detroit area study, the everyday discrimination scale (eds) is widely used in epidemiological research to measure everyday racial discrimination (williams et al., 1997). respondents are asked how often they experience discriminatory behaviours in their dayto-day lives, such as being treated with less courtesy or being perceived as dishonest. while originally developed and used to capture race-based discrimination in a sample of african americans, the eds has since been used to measure this type of discrimination in groups with various intersecting identities such as chinese-americans and vietnamese-americans (chan et al., 2012), american indian/alaska native college students (greenfield  
  canadian journal of public health (2025) 116:219–230  et al., 2021), and acb women living with hiv in canada (logie et al., 2013). though using the same scale across diverse contexts is appealing because it allows for comparisons of research findings, caution must be exercised. the eds is widely used to measure perceived racial discrimination in various populations, but most research assessing its reliability and validity has been conducted within american samples (bastos & harnois, 2020; chan et al., 2012; harnois et al., 2019; kim et al., 2014). however, the social, historical, and contextual specificity of race and racism calls for careful consideration of the applicability of the eds and evaluations of its performance in different social contexts (veenstra, 2009). canada’s distinct history and its social and political landscape differ significantly from those of the united states (usa). these differences draw into question whether psychometric assessments of the eds showing strong reliability and validity of the scale within american populations can be considered applicable in the canadian context. additionally, there are gender-based considerations in the way racial discrimination is experienced. women experience qualitatively different stereotypes than men (harnois et al., 2019), and past research has revealed “gender biases” in measures used to assess race-based mistreatment. for instance, a study found that adjusting for gender-related measurement error fully explained the gender disparity in reports of major life discrimination attributed to race (ifatunji & harnois, 2016). thus, as researchers endeavour to assess experiences of racial discrimination among women in canada, comprehensive psychometric assessments of the scale should be conducted to determine the suitability of the scale for this population. another important consideration is the validity of the eds by hiv status. racialized women, and especially acb and indigenous women in canada, are disproportionally impacted by hiv, and numerous studies have used the eds to measure racial discrimination among these populations (logie et al., 2013, 2017, 2018). the complex interplay between hiv-related stigma and racial discrimination means that racialized people living with and without hiv may be subjected to qualitatively different stereotypes (bastos & harnois, 2020). therefore, investigating the psychometric properties of the eds by hiv status not only informs future hiv-related research but also enhances our understanding of existing literature concerning the experiences of racialized women living with and without hiv in canada. in addition to assessing the reliability and validity of the eds within this population, this analysis aims to examine the measurement invariance of the eds across racial/ethnic- and hiv status-based groups. when eds scores are compared across social groups, the fundamental assumption is made that the scale is measuring the same underlying  221  construct, and that it is measuring this construct to the same degree in each group (i.e., measurement invariance) (bastos & harnois, 2020; meade et al., 2008). violations of these assumptions mean that comparisons of estimates of racial discrimination or comparisons of associations with health outcomes across racial/ethnic groups or by hiv status can become meaningless (harnois et al., 2019). in two usbased studies, analyses of the eds found a lack of invariance across racial/ethnic groups when used to assess racial discrimination (bastos & harnois, 2020; harnois et al., 2019). authors noted that the day-to-day discrimination experienced by different racial/ethnic groups in the usa differs and is shaped by the distinct roles each group occupies within societal institutions resulting in subjection to unique stereotypes. these findings and reflections, as well as the lack of similar assessments within a canadian context, underscore the importance of this line of inquiry. using data from women living in british columbia (bc), canada, with and without hiv, the main objectives of this analysis were to assess the (1) validity and reliability of the nine-item eds and (2) measurement invariance of the nine-item eds across race/ethnicity- and hiv status-based groups.  methods study design and participants we used data from the bc carma-chiwos collaboration (bcc3) study, which includes women living with hiv and hiv-negative controls (swann et al., 2021). bcc3 is a multidisciplinary community-engaged study that was established in 2020 and is being conducted in the province of bc. participants were eligible if they (i) self-identified as a woman (cis- and trans-inclusive); (ii) were 16 years of age; (iii) could provide written, informed consent in english; (iv) could attend an in-person study visit; and (v) were not currently pregnant or breastfeeding. recruitment was done through in-person recruitment of patients at oak tree clinic (the provincial referral centre for women living with hiv and their families) (kestler et al., 2018), word of mouth, posters at community centres and clinics, and social media, and through the bcc3 community advisory board.  data collection the bcc3 study protocol has been published elsewhere (swann et al., 2021). briefly, eligible participants complete two study visits: clinical and community. during the clinical visit, various biological specimens are collected (e.g., blood, urine) and participants complete an interviewer-administered survey on participants’ self-reported  
  222  medical and reproductive history, substance use history, and detailed socio-demographic information. following this, participants complete the community survey with a community research associate, a woman living with hiv and trained in research (kaida et al., 2019; swann et al., 2021). this survey focuses on socio-structural determinants of health, including experiences of racism and other forms of discrimination, sexual health and well-being, and experiences of violence, among others. all survey data are collected and managed using research electronic data capture hosted by the bc children’s hospital (harris et al., 2019).  measures primary stratification variable: race/ethnicity race/ethnicity was based on self-report. participants were asked “what do you consider to be your racial/ethnic background?” participants could select more than one racial/ ethnic identity, could select “other” and self-describe, or could select “prefer not to answer.” we grouped participants into four main racial/ethnic groups: acb, indigenous, other racialized, and white (see supplementary material table s1). these categories align with the common racial/ethnic groupings used in women’s hiv research in canada (carter et al., 2022; logie et al., 2018; swann et al., 2023). participants who identified as being both indigenous and any other identity were categorized under “indigenous.” those who identified as being both acb and any other identity were categorized as “acb.” participants who self-identified as another racialized group, or a combination of white and a racialized identity apart from indigenous and acb, were categorized as “other racialized.” similarly, this method of assigning single race categories is in alignment with the categories reported widely in canadian hiv research and surveillance, as well as guidance from the government of bc (bc data service division, 2023). secondary stratification variable: hiv status participants self-reported their hiv status on enrollment, and this was confirmed via hiv serology. participants were grouped into either “living with hiv” or “hiv-negative control.” everyday racial discrimination everyday racial discrimination was assessed using the nineitem eds, a tool that captures self-reported frequency of discriminatory experiences in a variety of everyday social situations (williams et al., 1997). in the bcc3 survey, respondents were asked, “in your day-to-day life, how often  canadian journal of public health (2025) 116:219–230  have any of the following things happened to you because of your race,” followed by nine items on specific instances of mistreatment, such as being followed around in stores, and being treated with less courtesy. scale items and item means by race/ethnicity are presented in supplementary table s2. responses were coded on a 6-point likert scale, ranging from “never” to “almost every day,” producing a total raw score ranging from 9 to 54 with higher values reflecting higher frequencies of experiences of racial discrimination. participants were also given the option “prefer not to answer” for each scale item. socio‐demographic characteristics demographic data included age in years; annual household income before taxes in canadian dollars ( 20,000; 20,000); gender identity (cis-gender; gender queer (which included those who self-identified as two-spirit, transgender, or non-binary)); sexual orientation (heterosexual; two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual (2s/lgbtqia )); education ( high school; high school); employment status (employed; unemployed; student/retired); housing status in the last 6 months (housed; unhoused); and marital status (married or common law; unmarried).  analyses this study excluded participants who did not report their race/ethnicity and who had not responded to the eds. we described the sociodemographic characteristics of the sample, and demographic variables were compared by race/ ethnicity using wilcoxon rank sum test for continuous variables and the pearson χ2 or fisher’s exact test for categorical variables. as a set of modelling strategies used to assess the performance of psychometric scales (brown, 2006), confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) was used to estimate measurement models of the eds within race/ethnicity-based groups and hiv status-based groups. guided by prior assessments of the eds (kim et al., 2014; reeve et al., 2011), we estimated a single factor model of the nine-item eds. model fit was assessed using the following indices: root mean square error of approximation (rmsea), comparative fit index (cfi), and tucker-lewis index (tli). given that chi-squared statistics are greatly influenced by larger sample sizes, they were not considered when assessing model fit. cfi and tli values 0.95 and rmsea values 0.06 were taken as indicators of acceptable model fit (brown, 2006; hu & bentler, 1999). in view of the ordered categorical nature of the eds items, we used the weighted least square mean and variance (wlsmv) adjusted estimator (muthen & muthen, 1998).  
  canadian journal of public health (2025) 116:219–230  all initial models showed poor model fit; so, we examined output modification indices to identify whether correlated residuals between pairs of items would improve model fit, which is essential for the subsequent tests of invariance. when modification indices suggested that correlated residuals would improve model fit, and it was conceptually reasonable—meaning the item pairs could be justified as relating to the same type of mistreatment—we allowed residual correlations and allowed them to be dissimilar across groups. this approach is in alignment with previous research in the field (bastos & harnois, 2020; kim et al., 2014; reeve et al., 2011; stucky et al., 2011). ensuring well-fitting models within individual groups is a precursor of multigroup cfa (mcfa) to test measurement invariance across groups (meade et al., 2008). so, after achieving baseline models with acceptable fit, we proceeded with mcfa across racial/ethnic- and hiv status-based groups. mcfa is an analytical technique that evaluates whether a scale/tool elicits similar response patterns across groups (i.e., invariance). we assessed three levels of invariance—configural, metric, and scalar—each more restrictive than the previous. configural invariance is the least stringent and requires that the number of dimensions underlying the set of items, as well as the factor loading patterns, are similar across groups (brown, 2006). next, metric invariance was assessed, which in addition to the requirements for configural invariance, assumes that the magnitude of factor loadings is similar across groups (brown, 2006). finally, in addition to all abovementioned criteria, scalar invariance includes similarity of item thresholds (brown, 2006). when more restrictive models show worse fit, it suggests that either factor loadings or item thresholds differ across groups, indicating lack of measurement invariance. to evaluate measurement invariance, we focussed on changes in cfi values (meade et al., 2008). similar to the cfa, this approach was chosen over chi-square difference tests because the latter are highly sensitive to large sample sizes (cheung & rensvold, 2002; meade et al., 2008). mirroring previous research in the field, a cfi 0.002 from the least restrictive (configural) to the most restrictive models (metric or scalar) was taken as evidence of lack of invariance (harnois et al., 2019; meade et al., 2008). cfa and mcfa were conducted in mplus v.8.8, and were restricted to participants who had completed the eds (even partially); mplus, by default, estimates models under missing data theory using all available data (muthen & muthen, 1998).  223  results sample characteristics of 507 women who completed the bcc3 survey, n 1 was excluded from the analysis because the individual selected “prefer not to answer” for all eds variables, and n 2 were excluded because they did not report their racial/ethnic identity, resulting in a final analytic sample of 504 participants. table 1 presents the characteristics of the 504 participants, stratified by race/ethnicity. briefly, 202 (40.1%) were living with hiv and 302 (59.9%) were not. sixty-two (12.3%) were acb, 152 (30.1%) indigenous, 90 (17.9%) other racialized, and 200 (39.7%) white. the mean age of the sample was 47.2 years (standard deviation (sd) 13.63), with acb women being the youngest (mean 40.3, sd 14.77) and white women the oldest (mean 50.5; sd 13.21) (p 0.001). there were also racial differences in hiv status, with almost 70.0% of acb women in the sample living with hiv (vs. 44.1% for indigenous, 36.0% for white, and 22.2% for other racialized women, p 0.001). stark socioeconomic differences also emerged by racial/ethnic identity.  confirmatory factor analyses table 2 presents the results of the cfa and highlights internal consistency estimates and model fit statistics for the eds by race/ethnicity and hiv status. all cronbach’s alphas were 0.90, indicating not only high reliability but also potential redundancy across scale items (tavakol & dennick, 2011). in the cfas, all factor loadings were 0.5, which generally indicates that the eds items are strongly related to the underlying construct of everyday racial discrimination (maccallum et al., 1999). high residual correlations between pairs of items were observed, indicating potential item redundancy, especially within race-based groups. the item pairs that had the highest residual correlations across groups were (a) and (b), and (h) and (i), suggesting that these eds items are affected by local dependence. within race/ethnicity-based groups, cfi and tli fell above the accepted threshold of 0.95, suggesting acceptable fit to the data. all rmsea values were however 0.06, indicating poor fitting models. however, fit indices are not to be interpreted in isolation, and considerations of the particular analytic situation should also be taken into account (brown, 2006). psychometricians have noted that when sample size is relatively small, as for the acb and other racialized subgroups, an rmsea 0.08 may be of less concern when all other goodness-of-fit indices strongly suggest good model fit  
  224  canadian journal of public health (2025) 116:219–230  table 1 sociodemographic characteristics of self-identifying women in the bcc3 sample (n 504)  age, years, mean sd hiv status living with hiv hiv-negative gender cis-gender gender queer sexual orientation heterosexual 2s/lgbtqia education  high school  high school employment employed unemployed student/retired unknown household income  cad 20,000/year  cad 20,000/year unknown housing status (past 6 months) housed unhoused unknown relationship status married or common law unmarried  overall n 504 n (%)  racial identity n (%)  p-value  african, caribbean, and/or black n 62 n (%)  indigenous n 152 n (%)  other racialized n 90 n (%)  white n 200 n (%)  47.2 13.6  40.3 14.8  48.2 11.9  42.7 13.7  50.5 13.2  202 (40.1) 302 (59.9)  43 (69.4) 19 (30.6)  67 (44.1) 85 (55.9)  20 (22.2) 70 (77.8)  72 (36.0) 128 (64.0)  487 (96.6) 17 (3.4)  62 (100) -  143 (94.1) 9 (5.9)  88 (97.8) 2 (2.2)  194 (97.0) 6 (3.0)  407 (80.8) 97 (19.2)  56 (90.3) 6 (9.7)  108 (71.1) 44 (28.9)  80 (88.9) 10 (11.1)  163 (81.5) 37 (18.5)  181 (35.9) 323 (64.1)  20 (32.3) 42 (67.7)  99 (65.1) 53 (34.9)  17 (18.9) 73 (81.1)  45 (22.5) 155 (77.5)  238 (47.2) 235 (46.6) 29 (5.8) 2 (0.4)  38 (61.3) 20 (32.3) 3 (4.8) 1 (1.6)  41 (27.0) 108 (71.0) 3 (2.0) -  59 (65.6) 21 (23.3) 10 (11.1) -  100 (50.0) 86 (43.0) 13 (6.5) 1 (0.5)  175 (34.7) 291 (57.7) 38 (7.5)  19 (30.6) 38 (61.3) 5 (8.1)  88 (57.9) 49 (32.2) 15 (9.9)  17 (18.9) 68 (75.6) 5 (5.6)  51 (25.5) 136 (68.0) 13 (6.5)  450 (89.3) 51 (10.1) 3 (0.6)  61 (98.4) 1 (1.6) -  120 (78.9) 30 (19.7) 2 (1.3)  89 (98.9) 1 (1.1) -  180 (90.0) 19 (9.5) 1 (0.5)   0.001  144 (28.6) 360 (71.4)  11 (17.7) 51 (82.3)  26 (17.1) 126 (82.9)  35 (38.9) 55 (61.1)  72 (36.0) 128 (64.0)   0.001   0.001  0.001  0.13  0.001   0.001   0.001   0.001  statistically significant differences are highlighted in bold acb african, caribbean, and/or black; 2s/lgbtqia two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual ; sd standard deviation; cad canadian dollar  (brown, 2006). similarly, within hiv status-based groups, cfi and tli values 0.95 indicated good fitting models, but rmsea values 0.06 suggested poor fit. this may again be related to sample size, or could be an indication of some model misfit. nevertheless, given the very strong cfi and tli values, acceptable model fit can be concluded.  sample size for this analysis was n 304. the cfi 0.002 indicated invariance of the eds across race/ethnicity-based groups. when assessing invariance across hiv status groups, stability of cfi values from least restrictive to more restrictive models was also indicative of invariance across them.  multigroup confirmatory factor analyses  discussion  in the mcfa (table 3), white respondents were excluded because low endorsement of most scale items within this group resulted in model non-convergence. therefore, the  the eds has been used widely to assess everyday racial discrimination among acb and other racialized populations in canada, and to make cross-group comparisons across  
  0.828 0.877 0.873 0.921 0.831 0.923 0.872 0.895 0.894 0.959 0.774 0.431 0.426 0.101 (0.070–0.133) 0.996 0.994  0.915 0.986 0.819 0.845 0.830 0.733 0.866 0.576 0.613 0.934 0.807 0.155 (0.108–0.203) 0.985 0.980  0.132 (0.093–0.172) 0.993 0.99  0.641 0.670  0.873 0.929 0.944 0.904 0.85 0.887 0.839 0.847 0.820 0.953  0.098 (0.073–0.125) 0.998 0.997  0.760 0.431  0.958 0.950 0.947 0.946 0.892 0.868 0.949 0.853 0.851 0.958  white (n 200)  0.103 (0.078–0.130) 0.996 0.994  0.588 0.617  0.909 0.943 0.940 0.932 0.858 0.909 0.879 0.824 0.806 0.960  living with hiv (n 202)  other (n 90)  acb (n 62)  indigenous (n 152)  hiv status  race/ethnicity  standardized factor loadings, internal consistency, residual correlations, and estimates of model fit  acb african, caribbean, and/or black; rmsea root mean square error of approximation; ci confidence interval; cfi comparative fit index; tli tucker-lewis index  cfi tli  scale item (a) you are treated with less courtesy (b) you are treated with less respect (c) you receive poorer service (d) people act as if you are not as smart (e) people act as if they are afraid of you (f) people act as if you are dishonest (g) people act as if they are better (h) you are called names or insulted (i) you are threatened or harassed internal consistency (cronbach’s alpha) residual correlations a–b a–c b–c h–i model fit information rmsea (95% ci)  scale items, residual correlations, or indices of fit  table 2 final confirmatory factor analysis models and internal consistency estimates of the everyday discrimination scale by race/ethnicity and by hiv status  0.079 (0.057–0.101) 0.998 0.998  0.753 0.429 0.436 0.504  0.910 0.934 0.913 0.940 0.893 0.910 0.945 0.880 0.886 0.967  hiv-negative (n 302)  canadian journal of public health (2025) 116:219–230 225  
  226 table 3 measurement invariance of the everyday discrimination scale  canadian journal of public health (2025) 116:219–230 level of measurement invariance*  race/ethnicity* configural metric scalar hiv status configural metric scalar  model parameters/fit index 2  df  179.02 189.94 292.21  74 90 160  145.34 148.53 151.93  48 56 91  χ  p  p for comparison of models cfi  tli  metric against configural  scalar against metric   0.001 0.118  0.001 0.105  0.001 0.090  0.994 0.994 0.993  0.991 0.993 0.995  0.691 -  0.000  0.000 0.090 0.000 0.081 0.000 0.052  0.998 0.998 0.999  0.997 0.997 0.999  0.877 -  0.344  rmsea  df degrees of freedom; rmsea root mean square error of approximation; cfi comparative fit index; tli tucker-lewis index; χ2 chi-squared  *  analysis excluded white respondents because low endorsement of the scale among this group ( 45% reported experiences of everyday racial discrimination) resulted in non-convergence in the model. thus, n 304 for this model  diverse social groups (cenat et al., 2021; godley, 2018; husbands et al., 2022). yet, the pivotal step of assessing the scale’s validity and cross-group invariance was lacking. to fill this knowledge gap, we conducted cfa and mcfa to assess the validity and cross-group invariance of the eds in a sample of women in canada. findings led to three main conclusions: (1) the eds is a valid and reliable measurement tool of perceived everyday racial discrimination among racially diverse women living with and without hiv in bc; (2) some pairs of eds items may be redundant; (3) the eds is invariant across race/ethnicity- and hiv status-based groups. we estimated reasonably good fitting models within race/ethnicity- and hiv status-based groups. this finding is consistent with literature from the usa that found that the eds adequately measures everyday racial discrimination within race-based groups (harnois et al., 2019; kim et al., 2014). this is an important finding, as it indicates that prior research in canada using this scale, including with samples of acb women living with hiv, can be considered useful and satisfactory in measuring the construct of everyday racial discrimination even though the scale was originally developed and used extensively in american contexts. while we estimated good fitting models, high reliability coefficients and residual correlations suggest the need to address issues of item redundancy, particularly for item pairs (a) you are treated with less courtesy and (b) you are treated with less respect; and (h) you are called names or insulted and (i) you are threatened or harassed. scale items should measure different aspects of the same underlying construct, but our findings suggest that these item pairs are being interpreted by respondents as being very similar, or as alluding to the same type of mistreatment. thus, the scale scores may be imbalanced across groups because more  weight is being given to a specific type of unfair treatment in some groups than in others. this local dependency in the eds has been flagged by other researchers (harnois et al., 2019; reeve et al., 2011). in a study that conducted cognitive tests in adults with various racial backgrounds living in the usa, participants indicated that items (a) and (b) were redundant, and “respect” was a more encompassing term for both experiences (reeve et al., 2011). the authors therefore suggested exclusion of item (a) from the eds. there is a need for future research utilizing similar qualitative methods to understand the nuanced experiences of everyday racial discrimination among racialized women in canada to inform modified and refined versions of the scale. based on our findings, we also suggest that researchers using the nine-item eds in similar samples combine the redundant item pairs and take their average, resulting in a seven-item version of the scale. by so doing, extra weight is not given to these forms of mistreatment while acknowledging the reported experiences of these forms of mistreatment by respondents. we also showed invariance of the eds across race/ethnicity- and hiv status-based groups. our findings are somewhat dissimilar to a previous study conducted in texas that found substantial non-invariance of the scale across race/ ethnicity-based groups when used to measure racial discrimination (harnois et al., 2019). such conflicting findings are however not unexpected given that the racial categories, and the historical and social landscape of the usa, are vastly different from those of canada. our finding suggests that the eds measures the same underlying construct of everyday racial discrimination and does so in the same way across various racial/ethnic groups of women, and also between women living with and without hiv in bc. this suggests that while the lived experiences of these groups are likely different, the way they perceive experiences of day-to-day  
  canadian journal of public health (2025) 116:219–230  race-based mistreatment is similar. these findings are important for research that investigates and compares the prevalence of racial discrimination and its associations with health outcomes across these groups. without evidence that the eds is invariant across race/ethnicity- and hiv statusbased groups, estimates of perceived discrimination may be attenuated or exaggerated in some groups more than others, making comparisons of subsequent associations with health outcomes misleading (harnois et al., 2019). therefore, our findings enable researchers to make unbiased claims about the associations between racial discrimination and health.  limitations and strengths while this study provides novel insights into the validity of the eds in a canadian context, it has some limitations. first, the data on racial discrimination were based on self-reports in an interviewer-administered survey. this approach introduces the possibility of under- or over-reporting due to factors such as participants’ prior experiences with discrimination, socioeconomic status, or the race/ethnicity of the interviewer (meyer, 2003; williams, 2016). however, these potential biases may have been attenuated by reminding participants at the beginning of the survey that their responses were confidential. additionally, surveys were administered by one of four community research associates with diverse racial/ethnic identities and lived experiences, and with extensive training in culturally sensitive survey administration, which may have further minimized self-reporting biases (kaida et al., 2019). second, our investigation into the measurement invariance of the eds by race/ethnicity excluded white participants because of model non-convergence. this means that we could not provide evidence that the eds produces estimates of racial discrimination that are meaningfully comparable to the other racialized groups presented. this issue of non-converging models for white subgroups has been noted by other researchers (bastos & harnois, 2020). we therefore recommend that future research with larger and diverse samples of white respondents who may have more variability be conducted to further assess the scale among them. further, our sub-group sample sizes, especially by race/ ethnicity, were relatively small and unequal (62 for acb, 152 for indigenous, and 90 for other racialized). this means that aspects of the models such as fit statistics and modification indices may have been differentially impacted by the unbalanced group sizes (brown, 2006). future research should evaluate the psychometric properties of the eds in larger samples. this study also relies on data from women disproportionately facing socioeconomic disadvantages and marginalization, which may not be representative of all racialized women in canada. there is also considerable racial diversity across provinces, so future studies should also use more nationally representative samples of racialized women.  227  finally, the way racial/ethnic identity was measured and categorized is a limitation of this study. to allow meaningful cross-group comparisons with reasonable sample sizes, we had to collapse respondents into four distinct racial categories. this means that, for example, participants who selected “african, caribbean, and black” were categorized as acb regardless of any other racial identity they selected. while this method was necessary for power considerations and in alignment with prior research in the field, it groups together people who may have different day-to-day experiences of racial discrimination. this obstacle when defining black populations in health research has been noted by researchers and warrants investments into having more accurate and precise data collection and more standardized methods of collecting race/ethnicity data for health research (cenat, 2022). nonetheless, the research presented has notable implications and strengths. this study addresses critical gaps in the literature, and stands as the first psychometric evaluation of the eds in canada, particularly within a sample of women. our findings suggest that racially/ethnically diverse women in bc perceive and report everyday discrimination in similar ways, which supports the meaningful comparison of perceived discrimination across different racial/ethnic groups with relatively minimal risk of bias. the scale has been widely used to measure this form of racism in various racial/ethnic populations in canada and also to compare these experiences across groups (cenat et al., 2021; godley, 2018; husbands et al., 2022; logie et al., 2013, 2018), but evidence that the scale measures what it purports to measure, and does so similarly across these groups in the canadian context was previously lacking. to this end, our findings contribute valuable insights that can contextualize and substantiate existing knowledge on the experiences of everyday racial discrimination among acb, indigenous, and other racialized women living with and without hiv in canada. the community-engaged principles employed in the bcc3 study are also a key strength. by using a “research by, with, and for” rather than a “research on” approach, the study meaningfully and actively engages women with hiv from study conception to knowledge translation (swann et al., 2021). such community-engaged research approaches have been shown to produce research outputs that are rigorous, accessible, and reflective of the priorities of the communities the research is meant to serve (kaida et al., 2019).  conclusion our findings suggest that the eds adequately measures the underlying construct of everyday racial discrimination among acb and other racialized women in canada. the results also indicate that the eds assesses everyday racial discrimination in the same way and to the same extent across race/ethnicity- and hiv status-based groups. this  
  228  allows for meaningful cross-group comparisons when assessing perceived racial discrimination and its relationship to health. however, future research should investigate potential redundancy between items of the eds and extend this work to larger and nationally representative samples. the study lays a crucial groundwork for future inquiry in this area.  canadian journal of public health (2025) 116:219–230 grant. e.m.k. and m.c.m.m receive support from health research bc. data availability available upon request to the corresponding author. code availability available upon request to the corresponding author.  declarations  contributions to knowledge  ethics approval the study was approved by the harmonized university of british columbia research ethics board (h19-00896, approved 29 november 2019, and renewed annually).  what does this study add to existing knowledge?  consent to participate informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.  • to the best of our knowledge, this study serves as the  consent for publication not applicable.  first comprehensive psychometric analysis of the eds in a canadian context. by establishing the validity and cross-group invariance of the scale in this setting, our findings enhance the reliability of past canadian research utilizing the eds. • this study also lays a crucial foundation for future investigations into the prevalence of racial discrimination and its health impacts among acb and other racialized women. what are the key implications for public health interventions, practice, or policy? • to effectively address racial health inequities through  policy interventions, it is imperative that the tools utilized in research to measure racial discrimination and its associations with health outcomes are valid and reliable. furthermore, adequate resource allocation demands evidence that the eds provides estimates of racial discrimination that are comparable across different demographic groups. this study provides this necessary evidence. • moreover, this research resonates with the bc anti-racism data act introduced in 2022 (government of british columbia, 2022), aligning with the recognized need to collect and use information and tools to address racism in government services, including healthcare. supplementary information the online version contains supplementary material available at https:// d oi. o rg/ 1 0. 1 7269/s41997-024-00966-7. acknowledgements we give our heartfelt thanks to all those who participated in the carma, chiwos, and bcc3 studies, without whom this work would not be possible. this work was conducted on behalf of the bcc3 study team. funding this research was funded by the canadian institutes of health research (cihr) project grants (het-85515, tco-125269, and pjt162348); a cihr hiv/aids community-based research grant (cbr170103); the cihr hiv clinical trials network (ctn 277 and ctn 335); and simon fraser university’s community engagement initiative  conflict of interest the authors declare no competing interests.  references bastos, j. l., & harnois, c. e. 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  230 wyatt, s. b., williams, d. r., calvin, r., henderson, f. c., walker, e. r., & winters, k. (2003). racism and cardiovascular disease in african americans. the american journal of the medical sciences, 325(6), 315–331. https://doi.org/10.1097/00000441-200306000-00003 publisher's note springer nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.  canadian journal of public health (2025) 116:219–230 springer nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.  
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secondary_title_index: health sociology review
abstract_index:
       the everyday discrimination scale (eds) is one of the most widely used measures of discrimination in health research, and has been
  useful for capturing the impact of discrimination on health. however, psychometric analysis of this measure has been predominantly among black americans, with limited examination of its effectiveness in capturing discrimination against other social
  groups. this paper explores the theoretical and historical foundations of the eds, and draws on the analytic framework of
  messick’s theory of unified validity to examine the effectiveness of the eds in capturing diverse experiences of discrimination.
  encompassing both social consequences and value implications, messick’s unified validity contends that psychometric evaluation
  alone is insufficient to justify instrument use or ensure social resonance of findings. we argue that despite the robust psychometric properties and utility in addressing anti-black race-related discrimination, the theoretical foundations and research use of the eds have yet to respond to current discrimination theory, particularly intersectionality. this paper concludes with guidance for researchers in using the eds in health research across diverse populations, including in data collection, analysis, and presentation of findings.     

authors_index:
       slemon, allie     susan dahinten, v.     stones, cheyanne     bungay, vicky     varcoe, colleen     

title_index:
       analysis of the social consequences and value implications of the everyday discrimination scale (eds): implications for measurement of discrimination in health research     

full_text_index:
       health sociology review 2022, vol. 31, no. 3, 247–261 https://doi.org/10.1080/14461242.2021.1969980  analysis of the social consequences and value implications of the everyday discrimination scale (eds): implications for measurement of discrimination in health research allie slemon , v. susan dahinten colleen varcoe  , cheyanne stones, vicky bungay  and  school of nursing, university of british columbia, vancouver, canada abstract  article history  the everyday discrimination scale (eds) is one of the most widely used measures of discrimination in health research, and has been useful for capturing the impact of discrimination on health. however, psychometric analysis of this measure has been predominantly among black americans, with limited examination of its effectiveness in capturing discrimination against other social groups. this paper explores the theoretical and historical foundations of the eds, and draws on the analytic framework of messick’s theory of unified validity to examine the effectiveness of the eds in capturing diverse experiences of discrimination. encompassing both social consequences and value implications, messick’s unified validity contends that psychometric evaluation alone is insufficient to justify instrument use or ensure social resonance of findings. we argue that despite the robust psychometric properties and utility in addressing anti-black racerelated discrimination, the theoretical foundations and research use of the eds have yet to respond to current discrimination theory, particularly intersectionality. this paper concludes with guidance for researchers in using the eds in health research across diverse populations, including in data collection, analysis, and presentation of findings.  received 22 january 2021 accepted 15 august 2021 keywords  everyday discrimination scale (eds); discrimination; health research; psychometrics; intersectionality  introduction in our global sociocultural and political context in which power structures privilege the experiences of some populations and identities over others (e.g. white, affluent, male, straight, cisgender, able-bodied, etc.), individuals read as ‘other’ frequently experience discrimination (johnson et al., 2004; link & phelan, 2001). discrimination is the unfair treatment of individuals or groups on the basis of difference (thompson, 2016). while difference may have a genetic or biological component, discrimination theory recognizes such categories as socially constructed and functioning to create and perpetuate social power structures (golash-boza, 2016). interpersonal discrimination occurs within the context of these broader power structures, and is closely linked to stigma. contact allie slemon allie.slemon@ubc.ca school of nursing, university of british columbia, t201-2211 wesbrook mall, vancouver, british columbia, v6 t 2b5, canada  2021 informa uk limited, trading as taylor & francis group  
  248  a. slemon et al.  while discrimination refers to interpersonal actions, stigma is often conceptualized as an attitude of devaluing and discrediting of another individual on the basis of their social identity (goffman, 1963; link & phelan, 2001). discrimination occurs in a variety of different ‘forms’, defined by the social group targeted by discrimination: for example, racism (race-related discrimination) toward people of colour or sexism (gender discrimination) toward women. however, various forms of discrimination stemming from othering processes may be expressed and experienced differently in society, through stereotypes that portray social groups through a particular stigmatizing lens, such as the stereotype of black people as more violent than both white people and other people of colour. all forms of discrimination at systemic and interpersonal levels cause disparities in housing, employment, socioeconomic status, social status, and health care access, and discrimination is thus recognized as a social determinant of health inequities (hatzenbuehler, phelan, & link, 2013; williams, neighbors, & jackson, 2003). the experience of stigma and discrimination has been identified as negatively impacting physical health (e.g. increased prevalence of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, inflammation, and self-reported physical health) and mental health (e.g. increased prevalence of depression and anxiety, and diminished life satisfaction and well-being) over the life course (brown, 2017; williams, lawrence, davis, & vu, 2019). experiencing discrimination has significant emotional and psychological effects, which have been compared to the effects of traumatic stress (polanco-roman, danies, & anglin, 2016). health researchers have increasingly incorporated experiences of discrimination into health outcome analyses to examine complex and multifaceted intersections between discrimination and health, including health behaviours, navigation of the health care system, maintenance of physical and mental health and well-being, and discrimination on the basis of health and disability (krieger, 2012; namkung & carr, 2019). to evaluate the prevalence and effect of discrimination on health, multiple instruments – all of which are self-report questionnaires – have been developed to measure discrimination. such instruments include the everyday discrimination scale (williams, yu, jackson, & anderson, 1997), the experiences of discrimination scale (krieger, smith, naishadham, hartman, & barbeau, 2005), the jackson heart study discrimination instrument (sims, wyatt, gutierrez, taylor, & williams, 2009), and the intersectional discrimination index (scheim & bauer, 2019). effectively capturing experiences of discrimination is crucial for recognizing and substantiating the negative health effects of discrimination, and for developing health interventions to mitigate its harmful effects that occur broadly across marginalized populations and uniquely for particular social groups. however, differences in the operationalization of stereotypes in society and in how discrimination is experienced across social groups raise inherent challenges in the measurement of discrimination, which have not been attended to sufficiently in how these instruments are used and reported on within the research literature. to support the aim of using validated, theoretically sound, and contextually responsive discrimination measures, this paper explores the theoretical foundations and ‘fit’ of williams et al.’s (1997) everyday discrimination scale (eds) for current research use. as one of the most widely used discrimination measures across health research, the eds has been used to inform understandings of discrimination as it occurs across diverse social groups, to capture both race-related and other forms of discrimination (lewis, yang,  
  health sociology review  249  jacobs, & fitchett, 2012). to evaluate the degree to which the eds effectively captures discrimination as experienced across social groups, this paper draws on messick’s (1990) unified view of validity to analyze the consequential basis of the scale’s validity, encompassing social consequences and value implications of the instrument. finally, this paper provides guidance for health researchers in using the scale to optimize measurement of discrimination.  background: development and psychometric evaluation of the eds historical and theoretical contexts the eds (see table 1) was developed by williams et al. (1997) in the context of the 1995 detroit area study, which examined the role of racial discrimination in health disparities between black and white americans. although the measure is phrased to capture all forms of discrimination, the authors contextualized the development of the eds specifically within race-related health disparities. articulating racism as a ‘societal force that adversely affects the health of racial and ethnic minority populations’ (p. 337), the authors argued that systemic and interpersonal discrimination – rather than intrinsic biological or genetic differences between racial groups – is the cause of disparities between racialized groups. this causal relationship was, at the time, a novel and controversial hypothesis. following the civil rights movement in the united states in the 1950s and 60s, societal discourses on race and racism positioned discrimination as declining, confined to isolated incidents, or even entirely eliminated from sociopolitical structures and social life (byrd, 2011; smith, 1995). ‘post-racism’, the notion that society has progressed beyond societal delineation by racial groupings, has permeated the collective consciousness in the past half-century, resulting in the dangerous obscuration of systemic and interpersonal discrimination that consistently impacts people of colour in the table 1. the eds 9-item measure. first stage  second stage  stem items  in your day-to-day life, how often do the following things happen to you? (1) you are treated with less courtesy than other people are. (2) you are treated with less respect than other people are. (3) you receive poorer service than other people at restaurants or stores. (4) people act as if they think you are not smart. (5) people act as if they are afraid of you. (6) people act as if they think you are dishonest. (7) people act as if they’re better than you are. (8) you are called names or insulted. (9) you are threatened or harassed.  response categories & scoring  almost everyday 5 at least once a week 4 a few times a month 3 a few times a year 2 less than once a year 1 never 0 total possible score 0–45 what do you think is the main reason for these experiences? your ancestry, your race, your gender, your age, your religion, your sexual orientation, and your education or income level, physical disability, ‘other’ (specify)  stem suggested response categories  source: williams et al. (1997) and williams (2016).  
  250  a. slemon et al.  western world (ono, 2010). underneath the veil of post-racism, stigmatizing attitudes and discriminatory behaviours are frequently ignored, including within health research – for example, by seeking genetic or behavioural causes for poor health, or locating the blame for health disparities within racialized groups rather than systemic forces (yudell, roberts, desalle, & tishkoff, 2016). in developing the eds, williams et al. aimed to counter such research and recognize discrimination as a stressor that negatively impacts health. prior to the development of the eds, discrimination measures were predominantly single-item measures, and/or designed to capture so-called ‘major’ experiences of discrimination – such as police brutality or being fired from a job – in a reflection of dominant societal conceptualizations of racism as operating in isolated incidents (lentin, 2016; taylor, kamarck, & shiffman, 2004; williams et al., 1997). to counter such narratives and to more effectively capture individuals’ perceptions of pervasive and ongoing discrimination, the eds was informed by essed’s (1991) theory of everyday racism. developed through a qualitative study with black women in the united states and the netherlands, essed situated racism within broader sociopolitical structures and within the ‘systematic, recurrent, familiar practices’ of everyday life (p. 3) – daily interactions between individuals in society. following, in developing their scale to specifically measure everyday racism, williams et al. (1997) aimed to capture ‘the recurrent indignities and irritations in everyday situations’ (p. 338), which alongside the more widely recognized ‘major’ experiences of discrimination, cause distress and adversely impact well-being. reflecting dominant social discourses of how discrimination operates in society, the eds was originally used alongside a three-item discrimination measure of ‘major experiences of unfair treatment’ (williams et al., 1997); however, in current health research, the eds is predominantly used alone. the eds measure and psychometric properties the williams et al. (1997) eds measure was originally developed as a unidimensional 9item scale with a 6-point response scale, scored cumulatively. subsequent publications of the eds included a second part of the measure wherein respondents who select a few times a year or more for one or more items are asked to identify ‘the main reason’ for reported experiences (williams, 2016). though the stem is phrased to invite a single response, multiple responses are possible. the second stage is not scored, and possible responses can be freely adapted by the researcher. williams et al. (1997) provided limited evaluation of the psychometric properties of the eds, reporting only the internal consistency of the measure (cronbach’s α .88), although the associations found between the eds and various measures of health and psychological well-being can be interpreted as convergent evidence of validity. following its development, a number of other researchers have evaluated the psychometric properties of various forms of the eds (i.e. the original 9-item and newer 8- and 10-item versions). these studies have provided evidence of internal consistency with cronbach’s α ranging from 0.80–0.88 (clark, coleman, & novak, 2004; gonzales et al., 2016; reeve et al., 2011; shariff-marco et al., 2011; taylor et al., 2004) as well as evidence of the construct (reeve et al., 2011; taylor et al., 2004), discriminant (taylor et al., 2004), predictive (stucky et al., 2011) and convergent (taylor et al., 2004) validity of the eds. for example,  
  health sociology review  251  calabrese, meyer, overstreet, haile, and hansen (2015) found associations between eds scores and poorer psychological wellbeing, including increased depressive symptoms. with some exceptions (guyll, matthews, & bromberger, 2001; reeve et al., 2011), there has also been considerable support for the unidimensional factor structure of the eds (gonzales et al., 2016; kim, sellbom, & ford, 2014; lewis et al., 2012; shariffmarco et al., 2011). it is, however, important to note that most psychometric studies of the eds have been conducted with black respondents in the united states (e.g. barnes et al., 2004; clark et al., 2004; taylor et al., 2004; williams et al., 1997). lewis et al. (2012) observed that discrimination operates differently for different racial/ethnic groups based on social bias and stereotyping, and that the eds may not consistently form factors that are relevant across populations. studies that have evaluated the eds with data from nonblack people of colour have confirmed lewis et al.’s concerns, demonstrating that the eds does not effectively capture discrimination as experienced by other racialized groups (bastos & harnois, 2020; chan, tran, & nguyen, 2012; kim et al., 2014). berenbon (2018) argued that as the instrument has been validated largely in relatively homogenous black populations, it cannot be applied to all populations without item revisions. particularly concerning is the severe floor effect, which indicates the eds most effectively detects severe experiences of discrimination and may not capture subtler incidents of discrimination or microaggressions (e.g. assuming an individual is a non-english speaker on the basis of appearance) (berenbon, 2018; stucky et al., 2011). this not only impacts the effective measurement of discrimination across social groups but also measurement of the varying and non-uniform experiences of discrimination within a particular social group (such as black americans), who may experience both ingroup discrimination such as colorism (monk, 2021) as well as discrimination related to other intersecting identities, including gender, class, or sexuality.  analytic framework: messick’s unified view of validity the traditional view of validity is that it is the degree to which an instrument measures the central concept it is designed to measure, that it is a property of the instrument itself, and that there are three distinct types of validity: content validity, criterion validity, and construct validity (hubley & zumbo, 1996; messick, 1990). yet while many researchers continue to assess an instrument’s validity through this view (polit, 2015), messick (1980, 1989, 1990) has critiqued this approach to psychometric evaluation, arguing that there is only one type of validity: construct validity. he states that it is the inferences from test scores that should be validated, and that validity testing requires ‘empirical evaluation of the meaning and consequences of measurement’ (messick, 1990, p. 1487). messick’s view of unified validity advances a theory of validity as having both an evidential basis, which reflects the traditional components of validity, and a consequential basis. the consequential basis of validity is an assessment of the social consequences and value implications of testing and inferences drawn from the test’s results. social consequences can include positive or negative impacts that result from a test’s use and interpretation of results, and draws attention to how inferences made from testing reflect and affect people and social groups in the real world (hubley & zumbo, 2011). value implications are concerned with ‘the broader theories or models in which  
  252  a. slemon et al.  constructs are enmeshed’ (messick, 1989, p. 60). this includes both how an instrument labels and defines a construct, and what theoretical and social values are reflected in the construct that an instrument aims to measure (hubley & zumbo, 2011). messick has argued that analysis of the evidential basis of validity alone is insufficient for evaluating an instrument for use within a particular context, and states that researchers must situate validity measurement within a broader view of theory, values, and social consequences that shape validity claims. further, researchers must attend to social consequences and value implications in test use, including instrument selection, analysis of results, and presentation of findings. following messick’s concept of unified validity, an analysis of the eds that examines only its psychometric properties is incomplete. researchers who aim to use the eds to examine discrimination must also attend to social consequences and value implications of using this test and interpreting its results. this paper’s analysis of the eds as an instrument designed to measure the core construct of discrimination is informed by messick’s unified validity, with a particular focus on the more often neglected consequential basis of validity.  examining the consequential basis of validity of the eds the psychometric properties of the eds have been repeatedly evaluated, and the eds has been found to be a robust instrument for capturing experiences of discrimination – particularly race-related discrimination. however, messick’s conceptualization of unified validity holds that researchers must attend not only to psychometrics but also to the consequential basis of validity in using the eds to capture experiences of discrimination across diverse populations. this section examines the eds beyond the evidential basis of validity that has been prioritized thus far in psychometric analyses. firstly, we explore the social consequences through an analysis of the research use of the instrument and potential impact on various social groups. next, we examine the value implications of the eds through an intersectional conceptualization of the construct of discrimination, which considers individuals as being socially located across a variety of identities and social groups, thus impacting experiences of discrimination. finally, we present recommendations for researchers who aim to use the eds as a measure of discrimination in studies across diverse population contexts. social consequences the eds was created within the context of a study seeking to capture race-related discrimination as experienced by black americans (williams et al., 1997), and following from this original aim, has been predominantly evaluated within black study samples. however, the measure was intentionally designed to capture not only black participants’ experiences of racism, but also white respondents’ perceptions of ‘reverse discrimination’, or ‘reverse racism’, as well as other forms of discrimination. indeed, the eds has been demonstrated in empirical studies as reflecting white participants’ perceptions of ‘reverse racism’. for example, in shariff-marco et al.’s (2011) analysis of a modified version of the scale in which race is explicitly stated, white participants scored higher overall than black and latino participants on the item ‘you have been threatened or harassed because of your race/ethnicity’. although white people may certainly face  
  health sociology review  253  discrimination in relation to a variety of other social locations and identities (e.g. sexuality, ableism), the concept of ‘reverse racism’ is a myth (newkirk, 2017; pincus, 2003), as discrimination against people of colour operates through social power structures, which uphold white-privileging systems and shape sociocultural narratives (ono, 2010). the eds’ capturing of participants’ perceived experiences of so-called ‘reverse racism’ is not only socio-politically troubling, but also raises questions about the social consequences of research findings. while some researchers may intend to capture perceptions of ‘reverse racism’, other researchers may face unexpected challenges in managing this data in analysis or presentation of results. researchers must carefully navigate white participants’ perceptions of discrimination based on race, and disentangle this data in the context of both racism experienced by people of colour, and intersecting, complex experiences of discrimination experienced by many individuals who are marginalized in society, white people included (lewis, cogburn, & williams, 2015). the original intent of the eds – to capture all forms of race-related discrimination, including ‘reverse discrimination’ – is rarely discussed in the literature examining the use of the scale, and as such, there is currently limited direction for researchers to address this challenge. in the current health literature, the eds is widely used to measure discrimination as it is experienced by and impacts many individuals and groups who experience social marginalization: for example, indigenous people (gonzales et al., 2016), older adults (barnes et al., 2008), queer and trans individuals (frost, lehavot, & meyer, 2015), individuals who experience weight stigma or ‘fat phobia’ (sutin, stephan, & terracciano, 2015), and individuals with low socioeconomic status (fuller-rowell, evans, & ong, 2012). the research use of the eds, as compared to its original intent to primarily capture anti-black racism and its subsequent psychometric evaluation toward this aim, poses challenges to researchers utilizing the scale to capture such forms of discrimination. firstly, as suggested by researchers evaluating the scale for use with non-black people of colour, societal discrimination does not operate similarly across racialized groups. differential item functioning (dif) analyses of the eds have identified multiple items that function differently between groups (lewis et al., 2012; reeve et al., 2011). for example, lewis et al. (2012) reported dif for multiple items, such as ‘people act as if they think you are dishonest’, which black respondents were more likely to endorse than chinese, caucasian, or hispanic respondents. this finding reflects stigmatizing societal narratives that specifically position black people as suspicious and untrustworthy, reflected in the current crisis of police violence and other pervasive forms of discrimination against black people that are being exposed and challenged by the black lives matter movement (issar, 2020). however, the implications for other racialized groups may be that experiences of discrimination that do not mirror anti-black discrimination are obscured. for example, while societal stereotypes of black people as unintelligent and threatening (adams-bass, stevenson, & kotzin, 2014) are captured by the measure, stereotypes of asian people as excessively academic and deferential – a ‘model minority’ (kay, day, zanna, & nussbaum, 2013; thompson, kiang, & witkow, 2016) – are not reflected in the instrument items. despite multiple studies demonstrating dif across more than half of the eds items (lewis et al., 2012; reeve et al., 2011), researchers have not recommended that items be removed to facilitate differing experiences of discrimination being captured by the instrument (brettell, 2011; chan et al., 2012). moreover, as the  
  254  a. slemon et al.  eds is additively scored as a whole, retaining items with dif may result in falsely low scores for some populations and under-represent meaningful experiences of discrimination that are reflected in only a few eds items. while harmful in all its forms, racism is a varied and nuanced concept that is not enacted in consistent ways against people of colour; yet, the use of the eds and analysis of findings may obscure the ways in which racism variously operates in society. if the eds does not effectively capture the varied and nuanced ways in which people experience racism, its utility in establishing discrimination as a structural determinant of health will be limited. as the instrument was theoretically informed by qualitative interviews on experiences of everyday racism among black americans, and developed within a study context aiming to capture race-related discrimination, there is currently no psychometric evidence strongly supporting a conceptual fit between the eds and experiences of other forms of discrimination. for example, people with large body size are frequently stereotyped as lacking in confidence and ‘weak’ (dunaev, brochu, & markey, 2018). as such, ‘fat’ people are less likely to experience being treated as though they are dishonest, but perhaps more likely to be treated with less respect, or experience a myriad of other forms of unfair treatment not captured in the eds (thomas, hyde, karunaratne, herbert, & komesaroff, 2008). similarly, individuals may experience important differences in the nature of discrimination related to social identities such as sexual orientation, gender identity, age, income, etc. (nadal et al., 2015). utilizing the eds to address forms of discrimination other than racism has not been sufficiently validated or evaluated, and researchers must ensure that they are applying a strong theoretical understanding of the nature of discrimination to be explored, to ensure the fit of the eds with the measured construct. further, concerns regarding the floor effect of the eds and the measure’s reduced effectiveness in measuring less overt forms of discrimination (berenbon, 2018) suggest that the eds may fail to capture microaggressions, indirect or subtle incidents of discrimination. now recognized as a widespread and damaging form of discrimination in society and within healthcare, microaggressions such as insensitivity and implicit stereotyping have consequences for health and wellbeing yet are unlikely to be adequately captured by the eds measure (cruz, rodriguez, & mastropaolo, 2019). the social consequences of inappropriate instrument selection or lack of congruence between the eds and what is known about the varying nature of discrimination across social groups may be that discrimination is under-measured for particular groups, and that important connections between discrimination, health, and social welfare are under-reported or missed. value implications in addition to the potential adverse social consequences of using the eds to capture discrimination across different bases, the value implications of the instrument should be examined through an exploration of the congruency of the underlying theoretical framework of the eds with current theoretical conceptualizations of discrimination. as discussed, the eds was developed within the context of a study specifically measuring anti-black racism, though it is now used to capture experiences of discrimination across diverse social groups. crenshaw (1989), in her landmark article ‘demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex’, critiques the ‘single-axis’ framework of discrimination,  
  health sociology review  255  in which discrimination is conceptualized as targeting only one aspect of identity at the expense of other identities. crenshaw argued that the single-axis framework can be seen in the erasure of black women’s experiences through the centring of black men in racism discourse, and the marginalization of women of colour in feminist activism that privileges white women’s experiences. to counter this framework, crenshaw presented a new conceptualization of discrimination as a complex and intersectional experience, which ‘cannot be understood as resulting from discrete sources’ such as racism or sexism alone (p. 140). subsequent to crenshaw’s work, intersectionality has emerged as the predominant theoretical foundation for current understandings of stigma and discrimination. however, the eds was originally conceptualized as predominantly capturing anti-black racism, and continues to be used to capture single dimensions of discrimination. for example, some researchers have adapted the scale to add ‘ ... because of your race’ to the end of each of the instrument’s items (clark et al., 2004; shariff-marco et al., 2011). while this adaptation may be appropriate and necessary for answering the particular research questions of a study, when viewed through a theoretical intersectional lens, the change to the language of the measure may also obscure the ways in which people who experience racism may also experience complex intersectional forms of discrimination related to other social locations, including gender identity or class (harnois, bastos, & shariff-marco, 2020; scheim & bauer, 2019). the second stage of the eds (identifying ‘the main reason’ for discrimination experiences) holds potential for capturing the multiple and various axes on which an individual may experience discrimination. however, the original text’s emphasis on ‘the main reason’ for the experiences identified in the first stage semantically encourages respondents to reductively attribute discrimination experiences to one aspect. for example, a recent analysis of research participants’ perspectives on the eds found that 43% of respondents described having difficulty identifying a singular reason for their experiences of discrimination, and suggested that the eds may routinely underestimate forms of discrimination (harnois et al., 2020). depending on whether data is collected in a written/ online survey or verbally/in person, researchers and respondents may interpret this section differently and may either prompt for all possible responses, or seek only one response to attribute all experiences of discrimination. further, situating the ‘reason’ for discrimination in the person (e.g. ‘your sexual orientation’, emphasis added), rather than in the social force of discrimination itself (e.g. homophobia) may have the unintended effect of invoking blame discourses that position individuals as ‘inviting’ stigma through otherness. the eds measure as a whole was developed within a specific study context, and a specific socio-political context more broadly, in which researchers aimed to demonstrate the ongoing impact of racism on health, in counterpoint to societal narratives of post-racism (ono, 2010; williams et al., 1997; williams et al., 2003). therefore, in the application of the measure to current questions of intersecting discrimination, important experiences of complex stigma, prejudice, and stereotyping may be lost. the eds has been identified through psychometric analyses as a robust instrument for capturing anti-black racism, yet must also be evaluated for its theoretical fit with current understandings of how discrimination operates in society through complex, intersectional social dynamics of power and privilege that frequently do not centre on a singular aspect of identity.  
  256  a. slemon et al.  relevance for researchers recommendations while the eds has demonstrated robust psychometric properties within black american populations and some other racialized groups, current theories of discrimination are in crucial ways divergent from the original aims and theoretical foundations of the measure. though the scale can easily be functionally adapted to any research question regarding discrimination, researchers must evaluate the theoretical fit of the measure with the study aims and philosophical underpinnings. there is a lack of overall consensus on the purpose and appropriate use of the measure, with many variants of the scale and frequent slippage between race-related and other forms of discrimination. while researchers may choose to use an alternative discrimination measure, such as the recently proposed intersectional discrimination index (scheim & bauer, 2019), the eds remains the most widely used measure and may be selected for a multitude of reasons, including facilitating direct comparison of results across studies. yet given the limitations of the measure highlighted in this manuscript, we encourage researchers who choose to use the eds in health research to carefully evaluate the fit of the measure with the target population and to consider adaptations that introduce possibilities for a more intersectional analysis. in advance of utilizing the eds, researchers must consider the particular population included in the study and ask: whose experiences, and which particular experiences, am i attempting to capture? whose experiences are likely to be reflected in this instrument? whose experiences are being obscured or ignored? drawing on theory and empirical evidence – such as qualitative narratives of discrimination experiences – to respond to these questions can help researchers evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of using the instrument, and generate strategies for tailoring the measure. for example, as the second stage of the eds is not a core component of the measure that has been psychometrically evaluated, researchers may provide different response options as possible reasons for experiencing discrimination that may better reflect the study population without jeopardizing the validity of the instrument. further, researchers conducting data collection in an interview setting can explicitly prompt participants to indicate all attributions of discrimination that apply, rather than focus responses on a singular attribution. an enduring challenge of the attributions element of the measure is the potential for white participants to claim experiences of ‘reverse racism’, and for researchers to inadvertently perpetuate this myth through reporting of results. researchers can intentionally identify such instances within a dataset and explicitly report these results as a confounding factor in the interpretation of self-reported discrimination. further, depending on the study aims and target populations, researchers may choose to adapt the language of the attributions to specify identities that experience discrimination, i.e ‘your identity as a person of colour’ or ‘racism toward people of colour’. in an additional potential adaptation of the measure to more fulsomely capture the various impacts of discrimination on health, moody, brown, and ciciurkaite (2019) argue that focusing on individual experiences of discrimination may limit the effectiveness of the eds and suggest that a loved one’s experiences of discrimination may additionally impact health and well-being. thus, particular analyses may benefit from adaptation of the eds to capture experiences of discrimination beyond the individual participant to discrimination experienced by loved ones or even an entire community.  
  health sociology review  257  while evaluating the fit of the eds and tailoring the instrument to specific study populations can facilitate more robust data on discrimination experiences, perhaps the greatest potential for addressing social consequences and theoretical implications of the eds lies in data analysis. the original eds scoring system is additive, and quantifying item responses and total scale score in this manner risks under-representing discrimination experiences. calabrese et al. (2015), in their exploration of experiences of discrimination for black sexual minority women compared to black sexual minority men and white sexual minority women, offered a data analysis strategy that expands the scoring and analysis of the eds to better reflect the intersecting identities and experiences of their study population. their analytic strategy utilizes both frequency and attributions of discrimination (from the first and second stages of the instrument, respectively). the authors recommend quantifying from 0–3 the number of axes on which participants experienced discrimination: race, gender, and sexual orientation, and using a three-part scoring system: the original scale total (of summed frequencies), a count of the number of items endorsed, and the scoring of attributions of discrimination experiences. frequency, scope, and bases of discrimination were presented as separate measures, which supported a more nuanced analysis of study sub-groups. this scoring system allowed the authors to use the eds measure in a manner that supported the research objectives of addressing intersectional discrimination in a population experiencing multiple forms of discrimination and stressors on health, and similar scoring adaptations may be useful in future research drawing on the eds or across other measures of discrimination. additionally, the newly developed intersectional discrimination index, which captures both experiences and attributions of discrimination, may lead to innovative analysis processes for other measures of discrimination such as the eds; however, as a newer instrument it has not yet been robustly evaluated or used extensively in research (scheim & bauer, 2019). if the eds is utilized within a strong, comprehensive theoretical framework, the measure can provide meaningful data on discrimination that resonates with current conceptualizations of discrimination in research and society. however, researchers must use caution in comparing the eds across diverse social groups and adapting the scale beyond the populations in which it has been developed and psychometrically evaluated, and must ensure that the eds is congruent with study aims (harnois, bastos, campbell, & keith, 2019). qualitative research can be useful in providing researchers with perspectives on the nature of discriminatory experiences, including the ways in which these experiences may differ on the basis of various and intersecting social identities (e.g. hamilton et al., 2014; museus, sarinana, yee, & robinson, 2016; zerger et al., 2014), and offer researchers insight into both the fit of the eds and potential adaptations.  conclusions the development and psychometric analysis of the scale has been largely within black american populations. in the wide application of the scale to other study populations and experiences of discrimination related to other social identities, the eds has not been sufficiently analyzed in its social consequences of use across populations, or value implications of theoretical congruency with current conceptualizations of discrimination, particularly intersectionality. this lack of analysis regarding the adequacy of  
  258  a. slemon et al.  the scale within other discriminated-against groups poses challenges to researchers across health, sociology, and other social sciences disciplines in analyzing the relevancy of the measure to stated research aims and in drawing meaning from quantitative data. further research is needed that specifically evaluates, adapts, and refines the eds to capture experiences of complex intersecting experiences of discrimination. additionally, researchers are encouraged to employ adaptation of the eds as appropriate, including creative analytical and scoring strategies to promote alignment of the scale with research aims and experiences of target populations. the eds is a widely-used and important measure of discrimination, yet researchers must recognize the risk of under-measurement of particular discrimination experiences, and draw on both empirical evidence and strong theoretical frameworks to ensure fit with target populations.  disclosure statement no potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).  orcid allie slemon http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4554-7109 v. susan dahinten http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5469-922x vicky bungay http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6440-7182 colleen varcoe http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9090-2793  references adams-bass, v. n., stevenson, h. c., & kotzin, d. s. (2014). measuring the meaning of black media stereotypes and their relationship to the racial identity, black history knowledge, and racial socialization of african american youth. journal of black studies, 45(5), 367–395. doi:10.1177/0021934714530396 barnes, l. l., mendes de leon, c. f., lewis, t. t., bienias, j. l., wilson, r. s., & evans, d. a. (2008). perceived discrimination and mortality in a population-based study of older adults. american journal of public health, 98(7), 1241–1247. doi:10.2105/ajph.2007.114397 barnes, l. l., mendes de leon, c. f., wilson, r. s., bienias, j. l., bennett, d. a., & evans, d. a. (2004). racial differences in perceived discrimination in a community population of older blacks and whites. journal of aging and health, 16(3), 315–337. bastos, j. l., & harnois, c. e. (2020). does the everyday discrimination scale generate meaningful cross-group estimates? a psychometric evaluation. social science & medicine, 265, 113321. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113321 berenbon, r. f. (2018). using rasch analysis to investigate the validity of the everyday discrimination scale in a national sample. journal of health psychology, doi:10.1177/ 1359105318800788 brettell, c. b. (2011). experiencing everyday discrimination: a comparison across five immigrant populations. race and social problems, 3(4), 266–279. doi:10.1007/s12552-011-9055-1 brown, r. l. (2017). understanding the influence of stigma and discrimination for the functional limitation severity – psychological distress relationship: a stress and coping perspective. social science research, 62, 150–160. doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.08.002 byrd, w. c. (2011). conflating apples and oranges: understanding modern forms of racism. sociology compass, 5(11), 1005–1017. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9020.2011.00420.x calabrese, s. k., meyer, i. h., overstreet, n. m., haile, r., & hansen, n. b. (2015). exploring discrimination and mental health disparities faced by black sexual minority women using a  
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title_index: race/ethnicity and measurement equivalence of the everyday discrimination scale.
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       psychological assessment 2014, vol. 26, no. 3, 892–900   2014 american psychological association 1040-3590/14/ 12.00 doi: 10.1037/a0036431  race/ethnicity and measurement equivalence of the everyday discrimination scale giyeon kim  martin sellbom  the university of alabama  the australian national university  katy-lauren ford this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  the university of alabama the present study examines the effect of race/ethnicity on measurement equivalence of the everyday discrimination scale (eds; williams, yu, jackson, & anderson, 1997). drawn from the collaborative psychiatric epidemiology surveys (cpes; alegria, jackson, kessler, & takeuchi, 2008), adults aged 18 and older from four racial/ethnic groups were selected for analyses: 884 non-hispanic whites, 4,950 blacks, 2,733 hispanics/latinos, and 2,089 asians. multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses were conducted. after adjusting for age and gender, the underlying construct of the eds was invariant across four racial/ethnic groups, with item 7 (“people act as if they’re better than you are”) associated with lower intercepts for the hispanic/latino and asian groups relative to the non-hispanic white and black groups. in terms of latent factor differences, blacks tended to score higher on the latent construct compared to other racial/ethnic groups, whereas asians tended to score lower on the latent construct compared to whites and hispanics/latinos. findings suggest that although the eds in general assesses the underlying construct of perceived discrimination equivalently across diverse racial/ethnic groups, caution is needed when item 7 is used among hispanics/latinos or asians. implications are discussed in cultural and methodological contexts. keywords: perceived discrimination, measurement equivalence, race/ethnicity, everyday discrimination scale (eds), culture  spencer, chen, yip, & takeuchi, 2007; kessler, michelson, & williams, 1999; pascoe & smart richman, 2009; pieterse, todd, neville, & carter, 2012; ryff, keyes, & huges, 2003; williams & mohammed, 2009). one of the most widely used measures for perceived discrimination is the everyday discrimination scale (eds; williams, yu, jackson, & anderson, 1997). the eds has been developed to capture aspects of interpersonal discrimination that are chronic or episodic but generally minor (williams & mohammed, 2009). an original version of the eds consists of nine items on a 6-point likert-type response format, with modified versions of the eds having different numbers of items (e.g., chan, tran, & nguyen, 2012; lewis, yang, jacobs, & fitchett, 2012) or different response formats (e.g., jang, chiriboga, kim, & rhew, 2010; lewis et al., 2012). a total possible range of the original eds is 1 to 54, with higher scores indicating higher levels of perceived discrimination. items included in the eds are daily experiences with unfair treatment such as being treated with less respect, being treated with less courtesy, being called names or insulted, and being threatened or harassed. with the reported advantages of its brevity and good utility (e.g., krieger, smith, naishadham, hartman, & barbeau, 2005; ryff et al., 2003; williams & mohammed, 2009; yoo, gee, & takeuchi, 2009), the eds has been applied to diverse racial/ethnic and cultural groups in the united states, including african americans/ blacks (e.g., barnes et al., 2004; clark, coleman, & novak, 2004; lewis et al., 2012; stucky et al., 2011; taylor, kamarck, &  perceived discrimination— defined as “a behavioral manifestation of a negative attitude, judgment, or unfair treatment toward members of a group” (pascoe & smart richman, 2009, p. 533)—is a widely used concept in psychological research and has been studied in many different types of situations. a general consensus on perceived discrimination in previous research is that it can be a chronic stressor regardless of the sources of discrimination (e.g., race/ethnicity, age, and gender), suggesting potential pathways linking to negative physical and mental health outcomes. there is ample evidence of research indicating that those experiencing greater discrimination in day-to-day life tend to have poorer physical and mental health outcomes than their counterparts (e.g., gee,  this article was published online first april 7, 2014. giyeon kim, center for mental health and aging and department of psychology, the university of alabama; martin sellbom, research school of psychology, the australian national university; and katy-lauren ford, department of psychology, the university of alabama. this research is supported by grant k01ag045342 from the national institute on aging. funding for the collaborative psychiatric epidemiology surveys (cpes) was provided by national institute of mental health grants u01-mh60220, u01-mh57716, u01-mh062209, and u01mh62207. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to giyeon kim, center for mental health and aging and department of psychology, the university of alabama, box 870315, tuscaloosa, al 35487-0315. e-mail: giyeon.kim@ua.edu 892  
  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  race/ethnicity and everyday discrimination scale  shiffman, 2004; williams et al., 1997), hispanics/latinos (e.g., lewis et al., 2012; reeve et al., 2011), and asians (e.g., bernstein, park, shin, cho, & park, 2011; chan et al., 2012; gee et al., 2007; lewis et al., 2012; jang et al., 2010). the eds has also been used with international populations such as south africans (williams et al., 2008). with regard to its psychometric properties, previous studies reported good reliability and validity of the eds (bernstein et al., 2011; clark et al., 2004; jang et al., 2010; krieger et al., 2005). for example, in a study of black adolescents, clark and colleagues (2004) reported that the eds items measured a similar construct, with an alpha reliability coefficient of .87 and item–total correlations ranging from .50 to .70. the eds items comprised a single component showing one factor yielded from a principal component analysis with 49.34% of the standardized variance accounted for. studies on korean immigrants (bernstein et al., 2011; jang et al., 2010) reported .90 or higher alpha reliability coefficients of the eds. measurement equivalence (or measurement invariance) of the eds, however, has not been extensively researched. given that items included in the eds are based on qualitative data from interviews with african americans/blacks (essed, 1990 & 1991), it is essential to establish measurement equivalence of the eds further across diverse racial/ethnic groups for more accurate and meaningful cross-cultural comparisons of perceived discrimination. a number of researchers (e.g., kim, 2010; markides, liang, & jackson, 1990; van de vijver, 2001) have suggested that measurement equivalence requires at least three interrelated conditions (i.e., conceptual, metric, and structural equivalence), which constitutes a hierarchy in that conceptual equivalence is required for metric equivalence, and both conceptual and metric equivalence are required for structural equivalence. given that the full version of metric equivalence means all corresponding factor loadings are invariant across groups and that the full metric equivalence is difficult to achieve, some researchers (e.g., byrne, shavelson, & muthen, 1989; gregorich, 2006; knight, roosa, & umana-taylor, 2009) proposed to rely upon partial factorial invariance rather than full factorial invariance, especially for cross-cultural comparisons. an example of partial metric invariance would be that in a onefactor model with five items, four of five factor loadings may be invariant, whereas the fifth differs across groups (gregorich, 2006). two recent studies have specifically examined the effect of race/ethnicity on the measurement equivalence of the eds (lewis et al., 2012; chan et al., 2012). lewis et al. (2012)—in their study of middle-aged women from five racial/ethnic groups including caucasians, african americans, chinese, hispanics, and japanese—found from their differential item functioning (dif) analyses that three items included in the modified 10-item version of the eds were biased by race/ethnicity. the three race/ethnicity-biased items were: “you receive poorer service in restaurants or stores” (item 3), which functioned differently for african american women than for most other racial/ethnic groups; “people act as if they think you are dishonest” (item 6), which functioned similarly for african american women and other racial/ethnic minority (chinese, japanese, and hispanic) women but functioned differently for caucasian women; and “you are treated with less courtesy” (item 1), which functioned differently for hispanic women compared with african american women. in another measurement equivalence study of the eds, chan and colleagues (2012) re-  893  ported that the original nine-item version of the eds did not function similarly between chinese and vietnamese american groups, although information on item-level analysis was not available. the authors noted that after deleting four items (“people act as if they are afraid of you” [item 5], “people act as if they think you are dishonest” [item 6], “you are called names or insulted” [item 8], and “you are threatened or harassed” [item 9], which capture a perceived sense of unfair treatment) based on results from exploratory factor analysis, the modified five-item version of the eds was comparable between chinese and vietnamese americans (chan et al., 2012). chan and colleagues (2012) also reported that the reliability coefficients of the modified five-item version of the eds remained good for both vietnamese ( .90) and chinese ( .87), with some minor changes in the reliability coefficients from the original nine-item version for both groups ( .92 for vietnamese; .88 for chinese). regarding the factor structure, the authors noted that the modified five-item model of the eds was better than the full nine-item model for both the vietnamese and chinese groups, with a much better model fit for the chinese group compared to the vietnamese group (chan et al., 2012). these two studies may indicate potential qualitative differences in the meaning of perceived discrimination across racially/ethnically and cultural diverse groups. given the observed racial/ethnic bias in the eds items in these recent studies (lewis et al., 2012; chan et al., 2012), more comprehensive racial/ethnic comparisons of the measurement equivalence of the eds should be conducted, especially using a nationally representative sample in order to establish measurement equivalence of perceived discrimination. considering strong needs for more research on measurement equivalence issues of discrimination scales, the present study focused on testing measurement bias in the eds across four major racial/ethnic groups in the united states (i.e., non-hispanic whites, blacks, hispanics/latinos, and asians) drawn from nationally representative data. this investigation will further advance science and increase knowledge in psychological and health disparities research.  method sample data were drawn from the collaborative psychiatric epidemiology surveys (cpes, 2001–2003; alegria, jackson, kessler, & takeuchi, 2008). the cpes is a combined data set of three nationally representative data sets including the national comorbidity study–replication (ncs-r; kessler & merikangas, 2004), the national survey of american life (nsal; jackson et al., 2004), and the national latino and asian american study (nlaas; alegria et al., 2004). funded by the national institute of mental health (nimh), the cpes data collections used a multistage area probability sampling method. face-to-face interviews were conducted unless a telephone interview was specifically requested or a face-to-face interview was not feasible. the cpes was selected for the present study because of its inclusion of (a) an original version of the eds measure and (b) diverse racial/ethnic groups, despite the fact that the data were collected about a decade ago. the current analyses utilized 10,656 adults aged 18 or older who responded to items in the eds from four racial and ethnic groups: 884 non-hispanic whites, 4,950 blacks, 2,733 hispanics/  
  kim, sellbom, and ford  894  table 1 descriptive characteristics of the sample across four racial/ethnic groups  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  m sd (range) or % variable  white  black  hispanic/latino  asian  f or ( 2)  age (years) female married educational attainment less than high school high school diploma some college household income perceived discrimination  47.43 16.89 (18–91) 58.1% 48.1%  42.45 16.06 (18–94) 63.4% 36.7%  40.61 15.66 (18–97) 55.8% 61.3%  41.21 14.76 (18–95) 52.4% 70.3%  44.723ⴱⴱⴱ (88.72ⴱⴱⴱ) (88.72ⴱⴱⴱ) (998.513ⴱⴱⴱ)  16.7% 33.0% 50.2% 43k 34.0k 17.12 6.78 (6–53)  23.7% 35.7% 50.6% 34k 31.0k 19.82 8.12 (1–54)  37.6% 25.2% 37.1% 45k 45.5k 15.81 7.45 (4–54)  15.1% 17.6% 67.3% 73k 58.7k 15.84 6.55 (1–54)  411.865ⴱⴱⴱ 230.191ⴱⴱⴱ  note. k 1,000. ⴱⴱⴱ p .001.  latinos, and 2,089 asians. seven individuals who had missing values on all of the eds items were excluded. as described in table 1, background characteristics of the four racial/ethnic groups varied significantly (all ps .001). with the mean age of 42.1 years (sd 15.88, range 18 –97), the hispanic/latino group was the youngest (m 40.6, sd 15.66), and the non-hispanic white group (m 47.4, sd 16.89) was the oldest. more than half were female for all four racial/ethnic groups showing significant racial/ethnic differences: blacks included more females (63.4%), while asians included relatively fewer females (52.4%). asians were more likely than other racial/ethnic groups to have higher levels of education and income (percentage with some college or higher education 67.3%; mean sd of annual household income 73k 58.7k). hispanics/latinos had lower levels of educational attainment (percentage with some college or higher education 37.1%), and blacks had lower levels of annual household income (m 34k, sd 31k) compared with other groups.  measures race/ethnicity. respondents were categorized into four racial and ethnic groups (non-hispanic white, black, hispanic/latino, and asian) in accordance with the u.s. census definition. everyday discrimination scale. the eds (williams et al., 1997) measures chronic and routine unfair treatment in everyday life. adopted from the detroit area study, respondents were asked to report how often they experience unfair treatment in their day-to-day life on a 6-point likert-type response format. response categories ranged from 1 (never) to 6 (almost every day), with higher scores indicating greater perceived discrimination. the nine items included in the eds are “you are treated with less courtesy than other people are” (item 1), “you are treated with less respect than other people are” (item 2), “you receive poorer service than other people at restaurants or stores” (item 3), “people act as if they think you are not smart” (item 4), “people act as if they are afraid of you” (item 5), “people act as if they think you are dishonest” (item 6), “people act as if they’re better than you are” (item 7), “you are called names or insulted” (item 8), and “you are threatened or harassed” (item 9). the internal consistency for the eds was acceptable; cronbach’s was .88 and mcdonald’s was .85. distribution statistics (i.e., skewness and kurtosis) indi-  cated univariate normality (skewness 2; kurtosis 7; see curran, west, & finch, 1996) for items 1–7 but minor violations for items 8 (skewness 2.05) and 9 (skewness 2.49, kurtosis 8.67).  data analysis although the eds has been considered unidimensional, we first conducted an exploratory factor analysis (efa) to determine whether multiple latent constructs explain variance in these indicators. for the primary analyses, confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) was used to estimate a measurement model using mplus 7.0 (muthen & muthen, 2012). because some individual eds items did not meet criteria for univariate normality, we used a robust maximum likelihood estimator to account for violations to multivariate normality.1 model fit was evaluated using the satorrabentler-scaled chi-square statistic (s-b 2), comparative fit index (cfi), tucker–lewis index (tli), root-mean-square error of approximation (rmsea), and standardized root-mean-square residual (srmr). since chi-square statistics are heavily influenced by sample size, cfi, tli, rmsea, and srmr are better estimates of violations to model fit in a large sample (little, 2013). cfi and tli values greater than 0.90 and rmsea values up to 0.08 indicate acceptable fit (kline, 2011; little, 2013). furthermore, for measurement invariance testing across groups, chi-square difference tests have been found too stringent, particularly when using very large sample sizes. we therefore used  cfi .01 (cheung & rensvold, 2002; meade, johnson, & braddy, 2008) and overlapping 90% rmsea confidence intervals to indicate invariance at the measurement (i.e., indicator) level (little, 2013). for latent parameters, however, robust chi-square difference testing was used (little, 2013), as most simulation studies to date have focused on measurement invariance rather than structural invariance. 1 some readers may question why we did not consider eds items ordered categorical data and thus used a robust weighted least squares estimator. we preferred the robust maximum likelihood estimator here due to its flexibility and simulation studies showing that items with five or greater categories can be estimated via maximum likelihood with minimal bias (johnson & creech, 1983).  
  race/ethnicity and everyday discrimination scale  age and gender were used as covariates in all cfa analyses (i.e., representing a multiple indicators multiple indicator causes [mimic] model). the mimic model was used to statistically control for potential demographic confounders such as age and gender, as they are known to be correlated with perceived discrimination (lewis et al., 2012).  results  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  exploratory factor analysis: a test of unidimensionality an efa was conducted first to determine if the eds items were indicated by more than one latent factor. we used maximumlikelihood estimation with robust scaling to extract the optimal number of factors in conjunction with horn’s (1965) parallel analysis. results from the parallel analysis indicated that the first three eigenvalues from the actual data were 4.96, 0.97, and 0.73; the first three corresponding 95th percentile random data eigenvalues were 1.05, 1.03, and 1.02. in addition to the traditional kaiser (1960) criterion of an eigenvalue of 1.00 or greater for a viable factor, these parallel analysis results clearly support a onefactor solution and, thus, unidimensionality.  confirmatory factor analysis: one-factor model next, we estimated a one-factor cfa model with age and gender as covariates separately in all four racial/ethnic groups, as it is appropriate to determine a well-fitting model in all individual groups prior to testing for measurement invariance (byrne, 2011). table 2 shows model fit statistics for each racial/ethnic group for the initial model. the results showed poor model fit in all four racial/ethnic groups for the initial model. we therefore examined whether respecification would improve model fit by consulting modification indices. more specifically, since we were working with a one-factor model, we examined estimating correlated residuals (or more appropriately, item uniquenesses) that could be justified for conceptual reasons. in all four racial/ethnic groups, estimating correlated uniquenesses for items 1 and 2 would be associated with the greatest decrement in the chi-square statistic.  895  we believed that this modification could be applied based on conceptual grounds (both items clearly reflect underlying lack of respect). model fit statistics improved substantially, but the incremental fit indices (cfi and tli) fell within the borderline range (.897–.928 for cfi; .867–.907 for tli) across the four groups. we therefore consulted modification indices again and determined that correlated item uniquenesses for items 8 and 9 were associated with the greatest improvement in model fit in all four groups. this modification would also be applied based on conceptual grounds, in that both items concern overt maltreatment (i.e., insults, threats, harassment) not captured in other items. this modification improved model fit to an acceptable level in all four groups (see table 2). figure 1 shows the overall covariance parameter estimates for the final model.  measurement invariance tests our next step was to examine measurement invariance to determine whether the underlying latent constructs are equivalent across four racial/ethnic groups, following procedures and recommendations by meredith (1993) and little and slegers (2005). results are presented in table 3. a model in which indicator loadings and thresholds were freely estimated served as the baseline (or configural) model. this model met criteria for acceptable model fit. next, we estimated a model in which indicator loadings were constrained to be equal across the four groups (i.e., weak invariance) and used the cfi and rmsea confidence intervals to evaluate potential differences in model fit relative to the configural model. as seen in table 3, there was evidence for weak invariance in multigroup comparisons for both the model with and the model without correlated residuals. finally, we examined a model in which both indicator loadings and thresholds were constrained to be equal across groups (i.e., strong invariance) and compared this model to the weak invariance model. as shown in table 3, there was no evidence for strong measurement invariance. as such, we consulted the modification indices to determine whether freeing up the intercept for a particular group (or groups) would meet criteria for partial strong invariance. indeed, allowing the intercept for item 7 (“people act as if they’re better than you are”) to be freely estimated in the hispanic/latino and asian  table 2 cfa model fit statistics for separate racial/ethnic group one-factor models model   2  df  white black hispanic/latino asian  345.82 2,003.55 908.89 904.22  43 43 43 43  white black hispanic/latino asian  140.35 798.68 308.91 317.77  41 41 41 41  p  cfi  tli  rmsea (90% ci)  srmr  original models  .001 .840  .001 .838  .001 .856  .001 .833  .799 .797 .820 .791  .089 (.081, .098) .096 (.092, .100) .086 (.081, .091) .098 (.092, .104)  .053 .056 .050 .053  final respecified models  .001 .947 .931  .001 .938 .918  .001 .956 .941  .001 .946 .929  .052 (.043, .062) .061 (.057, .065) .049 (.044, .054) .057 (.051, .063)  .037 .036 .030 .035  note. final respecified models include correlated uniquenesses for items 1 and 2 and items 8 and 9. cfa confirmatory factor analysis; cfi comparative fit index; tli tucker–lewis index; rmsea root-meansquare error of approximation; ci confidence interval; srmr standardized root-mean-square residual.  
  kim, sellbom, and ford  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  896  figure 1.  overall covariance parameter estimates. eds everyday discrimination scale.  groups, while constraining all other intercepts to be equivalent, met criteria for partial strong invariance. for item 7, the hispanic/ latino and asian groups had significantly lower intercepts relative to the white and black groups, meaning that lower levels of the underlying latent construct are needed for higher scores on this item for hispanic/latino and asian groups relative to the other racial/ethnic groups.  latent means, variances, and effect sizes across racial/ethnic groups finally, group differences on latent parameters were examined. because this was a one-factor model, we focused on only latent variances and means across groups. using the same multigroup comparisons described earlier, we first examined whether the variances in the latent factor were invariant across groups. we  table 3 measurement invariance tests across four racial/ethnic groups model  s-b 2  df  cfi   cfi  rmsea (90% ci)  1. configural 2a. weak 2b. weak with cu 3a. strong 3b. partial strong  1,511.65 1,698.28  164 188  .945 .938  .007  .056 (.053, .058) .055 (.053, .057)  1,720.27 2,290.75 1,950.46  194 212 210  .938 .915 .929  .007 .023 .009  .054 (.052, .057) .061 (.058, .063) .056 (.054, .058)  note. cu correlated uniquenesses are estimated to be equivalent; s-b satorra-bentler; cfi comparative fit index; rmsea rootmean-square error of approximation; ci confidence interval.  constrained these to be equal and then compared the model fit (using s-b 2 difference test) to that of the weak invariance (with equivalent correlated uniquenesses) model (see table 3). the results indicated that latent variances were not equivalent across groups ( 2 73.30, df 3, p .001). we therefore consulted modification indices, which supported freeing the latent variances in the black and hispanic/latino groups; this modification resulted in a model that was otherwise equivalent to the comparison model ( 2 0.78, df 1, p .382). table 4 shows the latent variances of each group. next, we examined latent means differences across groups. using the partial strong invariance model as baseline (see table 3), we constrained the latent means to be equal across the groups. this constraint was not tenable ( 2 87.16, df 3, p .001). we subsequently allowed the latent means for the black and asian groups to be freely estimated; this resulted in an otherwise equivalent model ( 2 3.27, df 1, p .071). table 4 shows the latent means and variances, as well as estimated effect sizes for group differences (in d units). table 4 latent means, variances, and effect size differences across racial/ethnic groups latent d variable  m  variance  2  3  4  1. white 2. black 3. hispanic/latino 4. asian  0.00a 0.46b  0.26ac  0.46c  1.00 1.81 1.49 1.11  0.35 —  0.22 0.55 —  0.44 0.73 0.17 —  note. means with different subscripts are not equivalent (per invariance analyses).  
  race/ethnicity and everyday discrimination scale  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  discussion in our attempt to identify the effect of race/ethnicity on measurement equivalence of the eds, we found evidence for the overall invariant underlying construct of the eds across four racial/ethnic groups from non-hispanic whites, blacks, hispanics/latinos, and asians, as well as the lack of invariance for one item (item 7, “people act as if they’re better than you are”) showing lower intercepts for hispanics/latinos and asians than for blacks and non-hispanic whites. this suggests that when the eds is used to measure perceived discrimination, the concept of discrimination regardless of the sources of perceived discrimination (e.g., race/ethnicity, age, gender) is in general perceived equivalently across different racial/ethnic groups in the united states. previous studies using modified versions of the eds (e.g., different numbers of items) also supported a one-factor model across different racial/ethnic groups (chan et al., 2012; lewis et al., 2012). however, findings on the nonequivalent item across racial/ethnic groups suggest that the perceived discrimination construct overpredicted responses to the item “people act as if they’re better than you are” for hispanics/latinos and asians compared to blacks and non-hispanic whites, which requires researchers’ careful attention. it was also evidenced that blacks scored higher on the latent construct compared to other racial/ethnic groups, whereas asians scored lower on the latent construct compared to whites and hispanics/latinos. the most intriguing finding was the lack of invariance for the item “people act as if they’re better than you are” across different racial/ethnic groups. it took a lower level of the perceived discrimination latent construct to score higher on this item in the hispanic/latino and asian groups relative to the non-hispanic white and black groups. when interpreting this item bias, researchers should first understand that true mean differences in the perceived discrimination construct across different racial/ethnic groups can occur with or without item bias and that the true mean differences in the perceived discrimination construct do not yield item bias in the eds by race/ethnicity. this item bias occurs when individuals in the same mean perceived discrimination construct, belonging to different racial/ethnic groups, have differential responses. mchorney and fleishman (2006) noted in their epilogue of the special issue on measurement equivalence issues in diverse populations that explaining the occurrence of bias in terms of meaningful psychological constructs is one of the crucial goals of measurement equivalence research. among many potential sources of bias, overendorsement on this item by hispanics/ latinos and asians relative to non-hispanic whites and blacks may be related to hispanics/latinos and asians’ susceptibility to cultural superiority that may be translated to discrimination experiences. it is also possible that the immigration-related factors such as nativity and acculturation might have predisposed hispanic/latino and asian individuals’ greater responses to this item, especially compared to blacks. in addition, given that the cpes data were collected when immigration had taken on very negative connotations in some parts of the united states, more recently immigrated participants could be more sensitive to this particular item, which may reflect real differences in the perceptions of discrimination of these immigrant  897  groups rather than bias in item functioning. although further specific reasons for the item bias are not clear, researchers applying the eds to hispanics/latinos or asians should be careful about the potential risk for overendorsement of this item by these racial/ethnic groups. a previous study examining measurement equivalence of the eds (lewis et al., 2012) did not find any evidence of racial/ethnic bias in this particular item. differences in results may be due to the use of different samples and response formats between lewis et al. (2012) and our study. our analyses used both men and women from nationally representative data, whereas only women were included in lewis et al.’s study. in addition, our study used the original 6-point likert-type response format, whereas lewis et al. used a revised 4-point likert-type response format. researchers should further elucidate potential reasons for the different racial/ethnic responses to this item. additional racial/ethnic-specific findings warrant further discussion. in accordance with previous research (lewis et al., 2012), evidence from the present study suggests that blacks’ experiences with unfair treatment in their day-to-day life are greater than those of all other racial/ethnic groups. previous studies investigating differential item functioning (dif) in depressive symptom items also found that blacks had different responses to items relating to perceived discrimination (e.g., “people were unfriendly” and “i felt people disliked me”; blazer, landerman, hays, simonsick, & saunders, 1998; kim, chiriboga, & jang, 2009), which may be related to their history of lower social status (kim et al., 2009). blacks’ higher score on the latent construct found in the present study may be due to items included in the eds scale being adopted from qualitative work on blacks (essed, 1990, 1991), in that essential components of blacks’ experiences with day-to-day discrimination might have been well represented in the eds scale, whereas some potentially important components of day-to-day discrimination experiences among other diverse racial/ethnic groups might not have been accounted for. in addition, in accordance with a previous study conducted by lewis et al. (2012), asians were less likely than other racial/ethnic groups to report their experiences with unfair treatment in their day-to-day life, which may be related to the “model minority” image of asian americans in the united states. however, given that asian americans are heterogeneous in terms of their immigration history, language, culture, and socioeconomic status, their everyday discrimination experiences may vary dramatically by ethnicity, which requires further investigation. some study limitations should be noted. first, given that our main focus was cross-racial/ethnic comparisons of the eds, the present study did not consider ethnic subgroup differences. given the reported heterogeneous characteristics of ethnic subgroups within blacks, hispanics/latinos, and asians (hajat, lucas, & kington, 2000; kim et al., 2010), future research should examine potential differences in responses to the eds items across different subgroups within each racial/ethnic group (e.g., african americans vs. caribbean blacks). second, other important background characteristics of racial/ethnic groups such as educational attainment and immigration-related factors (e.g., nativity, generational status, and english-speaking ability) were not considered as covariates in the present analyses due to the lack of evidence of the effects of these variables on the  
  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  898  kim, sellbom, and ford  construct underlying the eds in previous research. given that not many national surveys try to capture linguistic diversity among ethnic minority participants, it is possible that many monolingual spanish- or asian language-speaking individuals may not be included these survey data, suggesting that more limited english-proficient hispanics/latinos and asians might have been represented in these data. thus, further analyses on the influence of educational attainment and immigration-related factors (particularly language use) on measurement equivalence of the perceived discrimination will add to the current literature. third, it is possible that perceived discrimination measured about a decade ago may be different from the concept measured more recently. given the fact that the cpes contains 10-year-old data, results presented in this study should be interpreted with caution and thus should be replicated with more recent data. fourth, although examining differential correlates of the eds by race/ethnicity would add to the existing literature, concurrent measures of the eds were not available in a combined cpes data set of three different national surveys. future research should further examine racial/ethnic differences in correlates of the eds. lastly, qualitative analyses would be helpful to better understand how the individual items and the perceived discrimination construct are perceived. notwithstanding these limitations, the present study holds significant implications and strengths. it should be emphasized that this may be one of the few studies examining the measurement equivalence of the eds across four major racial/ethnic groups in the united states, especially using a very large, nationally representative data set. unlike previous studies demonstrating the measurement equivalence of the eds in samples of two ethnic groups or racially/ethnically diverse women from limited geographic areas (chan et al., 2012; lewis et al., 2012), we made a broad comparison of racially/ethnically diverse adults across the entire united states. findings from the present study indicate that racially/ethnically diverse minority adults in the united states in general perceive, experience, and report their everyday discrimination similarly, which may also imply that researchers can compare the concept of perceived discrimination meaningfully across different racial/ethnic groups with relatively little risk of cultural bias. one biased item identified in the present study, however, should be carefully used in the hispanic/latino and asian groups. given that the term “perceived discrimination” is widely used in psychological and health disparities research, researchers should clearly understand consequences of using nonequivalent perceived discrimination items for comparison and establish measurement equivalence of the existing discrimination scales such as the experiences of discrimination scale (krieger, 1990), the schedule of racist events (landrine & klonoff, 1996), and the racism and life experiences scale (harrell, 1997) before diverse racial/ethnic groups are compared. in addition, given the identified race/ethnicity-specific experiences of and responses to day-to-day discrimination, researchers might want to consider developing culture- or race/ethnicity-specific discrimination scales. in conclusion, the eds can be used to measure perceived discrimination across diverse racial/ethnic groups as originally intended with some caution on racial/ethnic-specific responses to everyday discrimination experiences. however, researchers  should be aware of the potential risk that, compared to other racial/ethnic groups, blacks are more susceptible to the experience of perceived discrimination and asians are less likely to report their experiences of discrimination. in addition, given the identified noninvariant “people act as if they’re better than you are” item among hispanics/latinos and asians, researchers should be careful when interpreting results from the eds across diverse racial/ethnic groups, especially hispanics/latinos or asians. further investigation should focus on structural equivalence of the eds. researchers should pay more attention to measuring perceived discrimination accurately and comprehensively. given that stressful experiences are influenced by many factors and thus should be understood in cultural, historical, and social contexts (williams & mohammed, 2009), cross-national equivalence of the perceived discrimination items should be further investigated.  references alegria, m., jackson, j. s., kessler, r. c., & takeuchi, d. 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  900  kim, sellbom, and ford  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  williams, d. r., gonzalez, h., williams, s., mohammed, s., moomal, h., & stein, d. (2008). perceived discrimination, race, and health in south africa. social science & medicine, 67, 441– 452. doi:10.1016/j .socscimed.2008.03.021 williams, d. r., & mohammed, s. a. (2009). discrimination and racial disparities in health: evidence and needed research. journal of behavioral medicine, 32, 20 – 47. doi:10.1007/s10865-008-9185-0 williams, d. r., yu, y., jackson, j., & anderson, n. b. (1997). racial differences in physical and mental health: socio-economic status, stress, and discrimination. journal of health psychology, 2, 335–351. doi: 10.1177/135910539700200305  yoo, h. c., gee, g. c., & takeuchi, d. (2009). discrimination and health among asian american immigrants: disentangling racial from language discrimination. social science & medicine, 68, 726 –732. doi:10.1016/ j.socscimed.2008.11.013  received april 3, 2013 revision received january 22, 2014 accepted february 20, 2014 䡲  
       


secondary_title_index: journal of clinical medicine
title_index:
       spanish version of the everyday discrimination scale (eds-e): factorial structure and scale invariance in spanish adolescents     

full_text_index:
       article  spanish version of the everyday discrimination scale (eds-e): factorial structure and scale invariance in spanish adolescents alejandro miguel-alvaro 1, * , jairo rodriguez-medina 2 1  2  3  *  and clara gonzalez-sanguino 3  department of psychology, faculty of law, university of valladolid, c/plaza de santa cruz, 8, 47002 valladolid, spain department of pedagogy, faculty of education and social work, university of valladolid, c/plaza de santa cruz, 8, 47002 valladolid, spain; jairo.rodriguez.medina@uva.es department of psychology, faculty of education and social work, university of valladolid, c/plaza de santa cruz, 8, 47002 valladolid, spain; clara.gonzalez.sanguino@uva.es correspondence: alejandro.demiguel@uva.es  abstract: background/objectives: discrimination is a phenomenon of special relevance in adolescence, as this is a key period in the development of young people, so measures that accurately and reliably assess it are essential. the aim of this research is to study the psychometric properties of the spanish version of the everyday discrimination scale in a sample of spanish adolescents. methods: the scale was applied to 1000 adolescents using computer assistance web interview (cawi) methodology by means of a stratified random sampling by age, gender and territorial distribution. results: the results reveal an unifactorial structure of the scale, with adequate measures of reliability and validity that confirm that it is a suitable instrument for assessing everyday discrimination in this population. conclusions: this study has implications for understanding the experiences of discrimination in adolescents and for developing interventions to reduce discrimination and promote equality. limitations and implications for the future are also discussed. keywords: eds; perceived discrimination; adolescence  academic editor: stephane bouchard received: 25 march 2025 revised: 15 april 2025 accepted: 19 april 2025 published: 22 april 2025 citation: miguel-alvaro, a.; rodriguez-medina, j.; gonzalez-sanguino, c. spanish version of the everyday discrimination scale (eds-e): factorial structure and scale invariance in spanish adolescents. j. clin. med. 2025, 14, 2887. https:// doi.org/10.3390/jcm14092887 copyright: 2025 by the authors. licensee mdpi, basel, switzerland. this article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the creative commons attribution (cc by) license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/).  j. clin. med. 2025, 14, 2887  1. introduction discrimination involves treating individuals or groups differently based on certain characteristics, which can be either relevant or irrelevant to the context. when these characteristics are irrelevant, such as race, gender or sexual orientation, the treatment is often considered unfair and potentially illegal [1]. discrimination can take various forms, including direct and indirect discrimination, harassment and victimization, and can originate from multiple sources like peers, parents, educators and healthcare professionals [2,3]. it can be based on race, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation and other characteristics [4], and it is widely studied that discrimination affects people’s social and economic status, well-being and health [5]. it also has broader social implications, contributing to systemic inequalities and social injustice. specifically, as highlighted in works such as that of trent et al. [6], any form of discrimination can leave damage, sometimes long-lasting and with dramatic effects such as low self-esteem, deep feelings of loneliness, exclusion, marginalization, isolation, a parasitic lifestyle with little social involvement, poor interpersonal relationships and little or no motivation for anything that represents the environment in which marginalization occurs (e.g., school), and others [6]. adolescence is a critical developmental period characterized by significant physical, social and emotional changes. during this time, individuals are particularly vulnerable  https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm14092887  
  j. clin. med. 2025, 14, 2887  2 of 14  to the adverse effects of discrimination, which can have profound implications on their overall development and well-being [7]. specifically, discrimination in the adolescent period is associated with an increased risk of depression, anxiety and other psychological problems [8]. adolescents who experience discrimination tend to have higher levels of stress and psychological maladjustment [7]. in addition, studies indicate that the stress associated with discrimination can lead to behavioral health problems such as substance use and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [9]. on the other hand, discrimination in the school environment can have a negative impact on academic performance and engagement. adolescents who perceive a negative racial/ethnic climate in their schools are more likely to experience discriminatory treatment, which in turn affects their academic outcomes [10]. discrimination can hinder the process of social identity development in adolescence, leading to self-esteem problems [11]. experiences of discrimination can also affect adolescents’ relationships with parents and peers, which can lead to social isolation and reduced support systems [12]. taking all the above into consideration, it is clear how important it is to understand and address discrimination during adolescence because of its far-reaching effects on mental health, academic performance and social development. specifically, discrimination among adolescents in spain is multifaceted and affects various groups differently depending on their physical appearance [3], ethnicity [13], gender [14] and sexual orientation [15]. the most recent study with spanish adolescents revealed that 66% of them reported having witnessed or suffered discrimination, mainly in the form of teasing, insults and bullying, with peers being the main perpetrators [3]. in spain, schools [3] and social networks [14], are primary contexts for these behaviors, which require specific and early interventions to address and mitigate the impact on adolescents’ well-being and mental health. however, in order to do so, a first aspect of vital importance is to have quality psychometric instruments that allow for the detection and evaluation of such discrimination in adolescence. there are many scales that seek to measure discrimination. among them, we can highlight the racism and life experiences scales [16] and the experience of discrimination scale (eod) [17], which measures the frequency with which people are discriminated against based on their race; the discrimination and stigma scale (disc-12) designed to assess the extent and content of discrimination in people with mental health problems [18]; the religious discrimination scale (rds), which assesses aspects of discrimination applicable and generalizable to various religious affiliations [19]; and the everyday discrimination scale (eds) developed by williams et al. [20], which has been used to measure perceived discrimination on a day-to-day basis. with the child and youth population, there are specific scales such as the adolescent discrimination distress index [21]; the perceived discrimination scale for chinese migrant adolescents [22]; perceived racial discrimination at school [23]; and the aforementioned eds [20]. precisely, of all the measures proposed to measure discrimination, the everyday discrimination scale (eds) is one of the most widely used instruments in different populations [24,25]. although the eds was originally developed with a focus on racial mistreatment of ethnic minorities, researchers regularly use it to assess other types of mistreatment, such as discrimination based on mental health conditions, gender or body weight [26,27]. the eds was developed by williams et al. [20] to assess the frequency of discrimination experiences in people’s daily lives. these experiences include being treated with less courtesy and respect than other people; receiving worse service in restaurants or stores; having people act as if one is inferior, frightening, dishonest or unintelligent; being called names; or receiving threats or harassment. empirical evidence indicates that the different versions exhibit quality psychometric properties [28]. the eds has demonstrated high internal consistency across various stud-  
  j. clin. med. 2025, 14, 2887  3 of 14  ies [24]. for example, in a study with black adolescents, the alpha reliability coefficient was 0.87, and the split-half reliability was 0.83 [29]. another study reported a cronbach’s alpha of 0.89 for a modified version of the eds adapted for medical settings [30]. furthermore, the eds has shown adequate construct validity [31]. additionally, the eds scores were significantly related to internalizing and externalizing symptoms, indicating good convergent validity [29]. the eds is generally considered unidimensional, although some studies have identified local dependence or nuisance multidimensionality. for example, an exploratory factor analysis with african american law students indicated local dependence within the eds [31]. in addition to such good general psychometric properties, the eds has other strengths. among them, it can be highlighted that it considers different reasons of discrimination and different contexts, and has a holistic approach, including not only macroaggressions, but also microaggressions [20]. several validations of the eds have been conducted with samples of adolescents. for instance, black american adolescents [29] or portuguese adolescents [32]. however, we do not currently have a study in which eds has been tested in a sample of spanish adolescents. in fact, there are validation studies with the eds in spanish, but not with a spanish sample, since they have been carried out with colombian adults [33] or with chilean children and adolescents [34]. as mentioned above, the factor structure of the eds in adolescents shows significant variations in different studies, indicating discrepancies in its application and validation in this population. the factor structure may vary according to cultural context and demographic group. for example, the portuguese adaptation of the eds for adolescents [32] showed a two-factor structure, while studies in black adolescents in the usa found only one factor [29]. the validity and reliability of the eds may depend on how it is adapted and validated in different adolescent populations. the portuguese adaptation showed that the eds can distinguish between perceptions of discrimination in different groups, suggesting that it may be a useful tool for measuring discrimination in specific contexts [32]. therefore, although the psychometric properties of the eds have been studied in the spanish version [33,34], it is crucial to consider the cultural and demographic context when using the eds with adolescents. these studies were conducted with a latin american, not a spanish, population. the variability in the factor structure suggests that specific adaptations and validations should be carried out to ensure the accuracy and relevance of the scale in different groups [35]. moreover, if we take into consideration that some authors claim that it is necessary to update the theoretical foundations of the eds to ensure its relevance in diverse populations [36], studying the psychometric properties of the eds in a population in which this has not yet been done (spanish adolescents) is highly relevant. even more so, taking into account the magnitude of the problem through the data expressed previously in which 66% of spanish adolescents declared having witnessed or suffered discrimination, mainly in the form of mockery, insults and bullying, with their peers being the main aggressors and the school being the main context [3]. based on the above, the aim of the present study becomes relevant, namely to analyze the psychometric properties of the eds in a spanish sample of adolescents in order to explore whether this scale is an adequate instrument to assess discrimination in this specific sample.  2. methods 2.1. procedure this study is part of a wider research project “stigma and discrimination as factors of vulnerability in childhood” funded by la caixa foundation (fs23-1b073). the study design is quantitative, exploratory, descriptive and cross-sectional. we used stratified  
  j. clin. med. 2025, 14, 2887  4 of 14  random sampling according to age, gender and territorial distribution through a panel of families, with data collection between october and november 2023. participants met the following inclusion criteria: (a) aged 12–16 years, (b) access to the internet and a mobile device or computer, and those who did not have an adequate level of spanish to complete the instrument were excluded. the company “analisis e investigacion” managed the sampling and data collection under cci/esomar ethical standards and iso 20,252 [37] and iso 27,001 [38] certifications, ensuring the quality of the process. data were collected through an online survey using cawi (computer-assisted web interview) methodology and a certified “access panel” with more than 100,000 panelists. recruitment of informants was conducted by invitation through personalized links to parents or legal guardians. information about the study was provided and informed consent was obtained before adolescents responded to the surveys autonomously via devices such as pc, tablet or smartphone. a cross-sectional natural group design (ngd) was used to assess the consistency of the responses of the adolescents and their guardians to the items of the instrument. the questionnaire, divided into two parts, included a socio-demographic section for adults (average length: 5 min) and a longer section for adolescents (average length: 25 min), where several scales were included. all data collected were anonymous, and the study was approved by the ethics commission of the university of valladolid (protocol code pi 23-3245nohcuv). 2.2. participants a total of 1000 spanish adolescents participated by means of stratified random sampling in terms of age, gender and territorial distribution (sampling error 3.1% with a confidence level of 95.5% for an infinite universe and under the assumption of maximum indeterminacy). in terms of gender, 50% were female and 49.3% male and 0.7% did not identify with any of the above. the mean age was 14 (sd 1.41). most of the families resided in large municipalities (more than 50% live in cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants), as well as having a high level of education (more than 57% have university or postgraduate studies), and an average monthly family income. the adolescents interviewed mostly attended public schools (69.5%) and, in terms of belonging to ethnic minorities, only 15.5% of the sample considered themselves to belong to an ethnic group other than north european or north american. with regard to the presence of a mental disorder, physical illness or disability, 92.7% of parents indicated that their children did not have or had not had any of these. details of the sociodemographic characteristics of the sample can be seen in supplementary materials (table s1). 2.3. variables and instruments  •  •  socio-demographic characteristics. a series of ad hoc questions are included for the parents of the adolescents: (1) age of the adolescent; (2) monthly income; (3) highest level of education in the household; (4) highest level of education in the household; (5) type of educational center attended by the child; (6) if the minor has or has had any mental disorder, physical illness or disability. in the same way, a series of questions designed ad hoc to be answered by minors are included: (1) gender; (2) ethnicity. discrimination. the everyday discrimination scale (eds) [39] was used, in its spanish version [33,34]. the scale is a 9-item instrument that inquiries about experiences of everyday discrimination, such as “you are treated with less respect than other people” or “people act as if they are better than you.” items are rated on a likert scale (0 never, 1 almost every day, 5 less than once a year). higher scores indicate greater perceived discrimination. finally, participants are asked to specify the reason(s) for these  
  j. clin. med. 2025, 14, 2887  5 of 14  experiences, including: ancestry or origin, gender, age, religion, height, appearance, sexual orientation, family education level, family income, disability, physical illness, weight or other specified reasons. the obtained scores are transformed to a scale of 0 to 100 points, where higher scores indicate higher levels of perceived discrimination. 2.4. data analysis the analysis was conducted in four phases. in the first phase, a descriptive analysis of the entire dataset was performed. in the second phase, after verifying the suitability of the data for factor analysis using the kaiser–meyer–olkin (kmo) test and bartlett’s sphericity test, an optimized parallel analysis was carried out [40]. additionally, in this phase, the presence of multivariate outliers was checked using mahalanobis d2 distances and guttman errors. in phase 3, to verify the instrument’s unidimensionality, mokken scale analysis (msa) was used. item scalability was evaluated using loevinger’s homogeneity coefficient (h). the obtained homogeneity coefficients (h) allow for the evaluation of the unidimensionality of the subscales. the cutoff values used in previous studies were considered [41,42]. subsequently, the automatic item selection procedure (aisp) was used to divide the item set into unidimensional scales [43]. in phase 4, a confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) was conducted on the polychoric correlation matrix obtained from the second random subsample (n 500). the reliability of the measures was then assessed using this model, examining internal consistency, reliability of individual indicators, construct reliability and measurement error. specifically, ordinal alpha [44] and mcdonald’s omega [45,46] were calculated. subsequently, measurement invariance of the established eds-e factor structure across gender was evaluated using multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (mgcfa). a sequence of nested models testing configural, metric, scalar and strict invariance was evaluated. invariance between models was supported if the change in cfi ( cfi) was 0.010 and the change in rmsea ( rmsea) was 0.015 [47,48]. all models were estimated using diagonally weighted least squares on the polychoric correlation matrix using r version 4.4.1 (14 june 2024) [49] and the lavaan package [50]. the diagonally weighted least squares (dwls) estimator was selected because the eds-e items use an ordinal likert-type scale response format. dwls is considered more robust than maximum likelihood (ml) for analyzing ordinal data, particularly when assumptions of multivariate normality might not be fully met, as is common with scale data [51].  3. results 3.1. sample adequacy index, multivariate outliers, and guttman errors an adequate sample adequacy index was obtained. the values obtained were kmo 0.89, and bartlett’s sphericity test χ2 (528) 307.79; p 0.001. all nine items obtained msa values close to or above 0.9 (discri1 0.89, discri2 0.88, discri3 0.90, discri4 0.92, discri5 0.85, discri6 0.90, discri7 0.90, discri8 0.90, discri9 0.90). results of multivariate outlier analysis show that none of the d2 distance values were significant at the α 0.001 significance level [52], with the maximum d2 value being 23.97. the number of guttman errors was calculated to identify atypical response patterns with the identification of eight cases with atypical response patterns. these results can be observed in detail in the supplementary materials (figures s1 and s2). 3.2. unidimensionality analysis regarding the homogeneity of the items, the coefficients (h) are examined for the set of items (for each item, item pair and the overall scale). the h scalability values of all items are shown in table 1. all items exceeded the critical value 3. the overall scalability coefficient obtained for the nine items was h 0.376 (se 0.014). the scalability of the item  
  j. clin. med. 2025, 14, 2887  6 of 14  pairs was above 0.3 for all pairs except for item pair 7–5 (hij 0.264, se 0.041), for item pair 8–6 (hij 0.279, se 0.035) and for item pair 9–7 (hij 0.282, se 0.037). thus, no indications of multidimensionality were identified, and the items are scalable to h 0.30, indicating medium accuracy [42]. table 1. homogeneity coefficients.  item  item h  se  discri1 discri2 discri3 discri4 discri5 discri6 discri7 discri8 discri9  0.417 0.435 0.374 0.382 0.340 0.374 0.353 0.346 0.348  (0.017) (0.017) (0.021) (0.018) (0.023) (0.019) (0.021) (0.020) (0.020)  the automated item selection procedure (aisp) was then carried out at increasing threshold levels of homogeneity to examine dimensionality. if all items appear as belonging to dimension number 1, it is an indicator that the scale is unidimensional at that threshold of homogeneity (indicated in the column headings from 0.1 to 0.5). table 2 shows the results of the automated item selection procedure; it can be seen that the set of three items can be considered unidimensional with a homogeneity threshold h 0.3. furthermore, all items showed local independence (i.e., they are only related through the latent variable). table 2. msa—aisp for increasing h thresholds (t).  item  t 0.10  t 0.15  t 0.20  t 0.30  t 0.35  t 0.40  t 0.45  t 0.50  discri1 discri2 discri3 discri4 discri5 discri6 discri7 discri8 discri9  1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1  1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1  1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1  1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1  1 1 1 1 0 1 1 2 2  1 1 1 1 0 1 0 2 2  1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0  1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0  regarding the monotonicity assumption, table s2 (supplementary materials) shows the results of the analysis indicating that there are no significant violations (#zsig) of monotonicity for any of the items. in other words, all items appear to discriminate well between participants with high levels of discrimination and those with lower levels. subsequently, the presence of possible floor and ceiling effects was identified. a floor effect is observed with 14.7% of the participants responding the lowest option in all items. in the supplementary materials, the results of this analysis can be seen in figure s3. table 3 shows the expected and observed correlations between each item and the total score, excluding the item itself [53]. a lower observed correlation than expected indicates that the item may not fit the dimension, while a higher observed correlation suggests overfitting or redundancy.  
  j. clin. med. 2025, 14, 2887  7 of 14  table 3. expected and observed correlations items—total score.  item  observed value  model expected value  absolute difference  adjusted p-value (bh)  discri1 discri2 discri3 discri4 discri5 discri6 discri7 discri8 discri9  0.54 0.58 0.56 0.51 0.49 0.54 0.35 0.43 0.51  0.51 0.50 0.53 0.50 0.54 0.52 0.46 0.50 0.54  0.03 0.08 0.03 0.01 0.05 0.02 0.11 0.07 0.03  0.242 0.001 0.483 0.610 0.291 0.534 0.000 0.015 0.345  significance level **  *** *  note: * p 0.05; ** p 0.01; *** p 0.001  3.3. confirmatory factor analysis model fit indices indicated excellent fit for the proposed single-factor model regarding the evidence of supporting the scale’s internal structure, as shown in table 4, (a) the factor loadings of all indicators were significant; (b) all of them were above 0.4. this indicates that the items strongly and effectively represent the underlying construct of everyday discrimination. in the supplementary materials, it is possible to observe the monotonically increasing step response function (isrf) and the characteristic curves of each item (figures s4 and s5), and table s4 shows the values of the principal component analysis of the residuals. (χ2 (27) 48.144, rmsea 0.031, cfi 0.993, tli 0.991, srmr 0.046).  table 4. estimates of the one-dimensional solution.  item 1. you are treated with less courtesy or politeness than other people. 2. you are treated with less respect than other people. 3. you are treated worse than other people in a restaurant or a shop. 4. people act as if they think you are not intelligent. 5. people act as if they are afraid of you. 6. people act as if they think you are dishonest or untrustworthy. 7. people act as if they are better than you, 8. they call you names or insult you. 9. you are threatened or assaulted.  b  se  z  beta  r2  0.725 0.807 0.455 0.765 0.333 0.580 0.860 0.601 0.437  0.026 0.028 0.021 0.029 0.019 0.024 0.031 0.025 0.019  28.072 28.666 22.023 26.456 17.161 24.521 28.040 23.835 23.546  0.682 0.748 0.532 0.659 0.426 0.630 0.633 0.582 0.591  0.465 0.559 0.284 0.434 0.182 0.397 0.400 0.339 0.349  note: all p-values were statistically significant at p 0.001.  a series of nested models were tested to assess measurement invariance across gender groups. initially, a configural invariance model was specified, allowing for free estimation of factor loadings and intercepts. subsequently, more restrictive models were tested: metric invariance (equal factor loadings), scalar invariance (equal factor loadings and intercepts) and strict invariance (equal factor loadings, intercepts and error variances). to evaluate the significance of differences in model fit between these nested models, chi-square difference tests were conducted, and the recommendations of chen [47] and cheung and rensvold [48] were applied, considering decreases in cfi and tli of less than 0.01 and increases in rmsea of less than 0.015 as negligible changes in model fit. the initial model, representing configural invariance, examines the fundamental structure of the measurement model. it posits an identical pattern of factor loadings across the groups under comparison; that is, the same items load onto the same factors in both  
  j. clin. med. 2025, 14, 2887  8 of 14  groups. in this instance, the baseline model tests the hypothesis that the overall pattern of factor loadings remains constant across both groups. the fit indices indicated adequate model fit for the configural invariance model (χ2(54) 60.56, p 0.251; cfi 0.998; rmsea 0.017, 95% ci [0–0.036], p(rmsea 0.05) 0.999), supporting the assumption that these items represent the same underlying construct for both groups. it can be concluded that the pattern of item factor loadings is similar across the two groups. table 5 presents the goodness of fit information for each model (χ2 (df), cfi, tli, rmsea) and the model comparisons ( tli, cfi, rmsea). table 5. measurement invariance across gender. invariance model  configural metric scalar strict  χ2  rmsea  value  df  p  value  90% ci  60.56 73.13 84.40 97.18  54 62 70 79  0.251 0.158 0.116 0.081  0.017 0.021 0.022 0.023  [0.0–0.036] [0.0–0.037] [0.0–0.038] [0.0–0.038]   rmsea cfi   cfi  tli   tli  0.004 0.001 0.001   0.002  0.001  0.001  0.997 0.996 0.995 0.995   0.001  0.001 0  0.998 0.996 0.995 0.994  note: rmsea root mean square error of approximation; cfi comparative fit index; tli tucker–lewis index; df degrees of freedom; ci confidence interval; (cfi, tli, rmsea, srmr) changes in fit with respect to the previous least restrictive model. configural (for identification purposes) one marker variable per factor fixed to 1, unique variances of marker variables fixed as 1; unique variance of first group fixed as 1, factor means of first group fixed as 0; metric loadings constrained to be equal across group; scalar factor loadings and thresholds constrained to be equal across group; strict all unique variances of all groups fixed to 1.  moreover, the chi-square difference test was not significant, χ2 (8) 12.573, p 0.127, indicating that the factor loadings were equivalent across genders. the evidence of metric invariance suggests that the items contribute consistently to the latent variable across groups. this allows for comparisons of latent variable variances and covariances between groups and warrants further investigation of scalar invariance. to assess scalar invariance, the model with invariant factor loadings (metric invariance) was compared to a model with invariant intercepts (scalar invariance). the latter model imposes the additional constraint that the intercepts of each indicator are equal across groups. scalar invariance allows for meaningful comparisons of latent means between groups. as shown in table 5, the scalar invariance model did not significantly worsen the fit compared to the metric invariance model. the chi-square difference test was not significant, χ2 (8) 11.27, p 0.187, supporting the assumption of scalar invariance. finally, the strict invariance model tests the null hypothesis that the error variances of each item are equivalent across both groups. in this case, group differences in the observed variables can be attributed solely to differences in the underlying latent factors. therefore, any observed group differences in the manifest variables are a result of differences in the latent factors. as shown in table 5, this model did not significantly worsen the fit compared to the less restrictive scalar invariance model. the chi-square difference test was not significant (χ2 (9) 12.78, p 0.173), supporting the assumption of strict invariance. 3.4. group differences in latent means after establishing strict measurement invariance across both genders, we compared the latent mean differences between male and female groups. to test for these differences, two models were compared. in the first model, factor loadings, intercepts, error variances and factor means were constrained to be equal across groups. in the second model, only the factor means were allowed to vary. the male group exhibited a latent mean 0.021 lower than the female group. however, as shown in table 6, no significant differences were found in the level of discrimination between the two groups (χ2 (1) 0.608, p 0.436, d 0.03).  
  j. clin. med. 2025, 14, 2887  9 of 14  table 6. latent means differences. χ2  factor  rmsea  value  df  p  equal means  101.41  81  unequal means  100.81  80  cfi   cfi  90% ci  p 0.05  0.062 0.025  [0.0–0.038]  0.999  0.993  -  0.058 0.025  [0.0–0.039]  0.999  0.993  0  value  est  z  p  effect size d  -  -   0.021 0.78  -  -  0.435  0.03  note: cfi comparative fit index; df degrees of freedom; rmsea root mean square error of approximation; tli tucker–lewis index; ci confidence interval.  to examine the differential impact of minority ethnic group membership, physical or mental health conditions, disability status and family educational background on perceived discrimination, a multiple-indicator multiple-causes (mimic) model [54] was employed. the mimic model allowed us to investigate the direct and indirect effects of these group memberships on a latent construct representing experiences of discrimination, while accounting for measurement error in the observed indicators of discrimination. the results indicate a satisfactory model fit (χ2 (35) 39.705, cfi 0.999, tli 0.999, rmsea 0.012, srmr 0.040). our findings revealed that physical, mental or disabilityrelated health conditions were significantly associated with increased perceptions of discrimination (β 0.917, z 6.96, p 0.01). in contrast, neither ethnic minority status (β 0.054, z 0.91, p 0.361) nor age (β 0.017, z 1.55, p 0.248) was found to be a significant predictor of discriminatory experiences.  4. discussion this study examined the psychometric properties of the everyday discrimination scale (eds) in a spanish sample of adolescents. the eds is a nine-item self-report measure that assesses experiences of everyday discrimination. the sample consisted of 1000 adolescents (50.7% female) aged 12–16 years. the random sampling was stratified in terms of age, sex and territorial distribution (sampling error 3.1% with a confidence level of 95.5% for an infinite universe and under the assumption of maximum indeterminacy). first, confirmatory factor analysis and mokken scale analysis supported the unidimensionality of the scale. most previous studies have found that the eds can be effectively modeled as a unidimensional scale, meaning that all items load on a single factor representing overall perceptions of discrimination [31]. however, the study conducted with portuguese adolescents [32] revealed a two-factor structure (unfair treatment and personal rejection) with a hierarchical model in which these two factors are subordinated to a second-order latent factor, perception of discrimination. our results do not support the existence of such a two-factor structure, being coincident with the unidimensional structure found in the study with chilean adolescents [34]. in this sense, it would be interesting for future studies to test the eds on samples with different languages to study the possible explanation for the different factorial structures found. it is important to highlight the results of the qualitative work of harnois [55], in which it was found that people may interpret the eds questions in very different ways: some interpret the scale as a question about negative interactions; others see it from the point of view of social inequalities; and others from the specific point of view of racism. racial/ethnic and gender status may structure the interpretation of the questions [55], which could be a possible explanation for the discrepancies in the number of factors found on the scale in different samples. specifically, the results in our sample of spanish adolescents indicated that the eds is invariant across gender groups, suggesting that it measures discrimination similarly in males and females. this result is congruent with the reference work of bastos and harnois [28], in which multigroup confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to com-  
  j. clin. med. 2025, 14, 2887  10 of 14  pare the configurational, metric and scalar structures of the eds in its original english version. the invariance across gender groups allows us to establish the relationship between discrimination and health-related variables [28]. the results of our study indicate that physical, mental or disability-related health conditions were significantly associated with increased perceptions of discrimination. these data are congruent with previous studies indicating that discrimination in adolescence is related to higher rates of anxiety and depression [8], higher levels of stress and psychological maladjustment [7] or, for example, with a higher risk of suffering from a substance addiction problem or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [9]. if we take as a reference the american psychological association (apa) [56] definition of discrimination, namely “unfair or prejudicial treatment of individuals and groups based on characteristics such as race, gender, age or sexual orientation”, it becomes of great interest to analyze the results in terms of group identity. there is evidence that discrimination among adolescents in spain is multifaceted and affects various groups differently depending on their ethnicity [13] or gender [14], among others. in this regard, no significant differences were found in perceived discrimination between males and females. while some studies suggest that there are no significant gender differences among adolescents [29] on overall eds scores, others highlight that boys, especially those from minority backgrounds, may perceive higher levels of discrimination [57,58]. future studies could explore how sexism affects such discrimination, as in the study with spanish adolescents by gil bermejo et al. [14] it was a very important element in explaining discrimination towards females. contextual factors and the specific environments in which discrimination occurs also play a crucial role in shaping these experiences [59]. however, in our study, neither ethnic minority status nor age was found to be a significant predictor of discriminatory experiences. it would be of interest for future studies to focus on studying the phenomenon with specific minority samples of spanish adolescents in order to understand all the nuances essential for developing interventions aimed at addressing discrimination among adolescents the findings provide evidence that the eds is a reliable and valid measure of everyday discrimination in spanish adolescents. the first and clearest implication of this work is that it provides assurance that the eds is an appropriate instrument for measuring the perception of discrimination in spanish adolescents. future research will be able to rely on psychometric guarantees when using the eds with spanish adolescents. this is very important because the eds allows us to measure perceptions of unfair treatment derived from everyday discrimination, which is something different from general interpersonal aggression, highlighting the importance and usefulness of the present study. in this way, the instrument can be used to detect risk situations and to test interventions against a control group, to help identify the most effective strategies to reduce discrimination [60]. on the other hand, the eds should be used with intersectionality in mind, as marginalized people often experience discrimination on multiple grounds [55]. this approach can help capture the full scope of discrimination experiences and provide more accurate data for interventions. with evidence that the eds has adequate psychometric properties in the study population, future research in this regard will have greater assurance of quality. the study has some limitations that should be acknowledged. the cross-sectional nature of this study limits the ability to draw causal inferences about the relationship between discrimination and its potential consequences. the sample was drawn from a panel of families with internet access, potentially excluding adolescents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who may have different experiences of discrimination. in addition, the reliance on self-reported measures of discrimination, while common in this field of research, introduces potential biases. adolescents’ perceptions and interpretations of discrimina-  
  j. clin. med. 2025, 14, 2887  11 of 14  tion might be influenced by individual factors, social desirability, or recall difficulties. this study partially addressed this by including parent reports of their children’s health conditions, but other variables were solely adolescent-reported. furthermore, validity tests based on relationships with other variables have not been carried out. on the other hand, the eds captures general experiences of everyday discrimination without specifically targeting the reasons for discrimination. while participants could indicate the reasons they perceived were behind the discriminatory actions, this study did not deeply analyze these or examine whether the psychometric properties of the eds hold across different types of discrimination. a floor effect was identified, with 14.7% of participants reporting the lowest possible level of discrimination across all items. this suggests the eds might not be sensitive enough to capture the experiences of adolescents who encounter very low levels of discrimination, potentially underestimating the prevalence of discrimination in the sample. in addition, it should be noted that these floor effects have been previously reported by other authors [61], particularly in populations that experience low levels of discrimination. these data highlight the need for careful consideration and appropriate statistical methods to ensure accurate measurement and analysis of discrimination experiences. researchers should be aware of these limitations and adopt strategies to address them effectively in order to adequately measure discrimination. future research may benefit from understanding the psychometric properties of the eds-e questionnaire in order to deepen knowledge about discrimination among adolescents. studies that highlight experiences of discrimination and relate them to various causes and sociodemographic groups will be essential for identifying key vulnerability factors and for implementing subsequent interventions. in addition, upcoming research should employ longitudinal designs to examine the temporal relationship between discrimination and various outcomes. examining the psychometric properties and prevalence of discrimination in more diverse samples, including adolescents from different countries, socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnicities and with varying disabilities, is crucial. combining quantitative approaches like the eds with qualitative methods (e.g., interviews, focus groups) could provide richer insights into the lived experiences of discrimination among adolescents. qualitative data can illuminate the nuances of how discrimination is perceived, coped with, and the specific contexts in which it occurs. a critical next step is to develop and rigorously evaluate interventions aimed at reducing discrimination and its impact on adolescents. these interventions could target individual coping strategies, school climate or broader societal attitudes. also, the intersectionality of different forms of discrimination should be considered. examining how multiple marginalized identities (e.g., being a girl from an ethnic minority group with a disability) interact to shape experiences of discrimination is essential for developing tailored interventions. by addressing these limitations and pursuing these research directions, the field can advance our understanding of everyday discrimination and its consequences for adolescents, ultimately contributing to the creation of a culture of equality. supplementary materials: the following supporting information can be downloaded at: https://www. mdpi.com/article/10.3390/jcm14092887/s1, table s1: sociodemographic characteristics of the sample; table s2: msa—monotonicity analysis [42]; table s3: principal component analysis of the residuals; figure s1: q-q plot of mahalanobis d2 vs. quantiles of χ2; figure s2: distribucion de errores de guttman; figure s3: floor/ceiling effects; figure s4: step response function (isrf); figure s5: item characteristics curves. author contributions: conceptualization, c.g.-s.; methodology, j.r.-m.; formal analysis, j.r.-m.; investigation, c.g.-s., j.r.-m. and a.m.-a.; data curation, j.r.-m.; writing—original draft preparation, c.g.-s., j.r.-m. and a.m.-a.; writing—review and editing, c.g.-s., j.r.-m. and a.m.-a.; visualization,  
  j. clin. med. 2025, 14, 2887  12 of 14  j.r.-m. and a.m.-a.; supervision, c.g.-s.; project administration, c.g.-s.; funding acquisition, c.g.-s. all authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. funding: this research was funded by la caixa foundation grant number fs23-1b073. institutional review board statement: this study was conducted to the guidelines of the declaration of helsinki and approved by the ethics committee of university of valladolid (protocol code pi 23-3245nohcuv; 27 july 2023). informed consent statement: informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study. data availability statement: the data presented in this study are available upon request from the corresponding author due to privacy reasons. conflicts of interest: the authors declare no conflicts of interest.  references 1.  2. 3. 4. 5. 6.  7. 8.  9. 10. 11. 12. 13.  14. 15. 16. 17. 18.  rodat, s. discrimination: forms, consequences, and anti-discrimination strategies. in en handbook of research on policies, protocols, and practices for social work in the digital world; information science reference/igi global: hershey, pa, usa, 2021; pp. 487–507. [crossref] meurillon, r.; stheneur, c.; le roux, e. discrimination against adolescents with chronic diseases: a systematic review. eur. j. pediatr. 2024, 184, 74. [crossref] [pubmed] valdivieso-leon, l.; ayuso-lanchares, a.; gonzalez-sanguino, c. witnessing and experiencing discrimination: a study in spanish adolescents. educ. sci. 2024, 14, 1356. [crossref] alvarez-galvez, j.; salvador-carulla, l. perceived discrimination and self-rated health in europe: evidence from the european social survey (2010). plos one 2013, 8, e74252. [crossref] [pubmed] abu-ras, w.; suarez, z.e.; breiwish, r.r. beyond the axes of inequality: religion, race, and everything in between. am. j. orthopsychiatry 2021, 91, 217–235. [crossref] trent, m.; dooley, d.g.; douge, j.; section on adolescent health, council on community pediatrics, committee on adolescence; cavanaugh, r.m., jr.; lacroix, a.e.; fanburg, j.; rahmandar, m.h.; hornberger, l.l.; schneider, m.b.; et al. the impact of racism on child and adolescent health. pediatrics 2019, 144, e20191765. [crossref] benner, a. the toll of racial/ethnic discrimination on adolescents’ adjustment. child dev. perspect. 2017, 11, 251–256. [crossref] brody, g.h.; yu, t.; chen, e.; miller, g.e.; barton, a.w.; kogan, s.m. family-centered prevention effects on the association between racial discrimination and mental health in black adolescents: secondary analysis of 2 randomized clinical trials. jama netw. open 2021, 4, e211964. [crossref] leventhal, a.m.; cho, j.; andrabi, n.; barrington-trimis, j. association of reported concern about increasing societal discrimination with adverse behavioral health outcomes in late adolescence. jama pediatr. 2018, 172, 924–933. [crossref] grapin, s.l.; griffin, c.b.; naser, s.c.; brown, j.m.; proctor, s.l. school-based interventions for reducing youths’ racial and ethnic prejudice. policy insights behav. brain sci. 2019, 6, 154–161. [crossref] perez-albeniz, a.; lucas-molina, b.; gutierrez, a.; elvira-rey, c.; ortuno-sierra, j.; diez-gomez, a.; fonseca-pedrero, e. sexual orientation, self-esteem, and academic achievement during adolescence. rev. educ. 2023, 399, 105–130. [crossref] juang, l.p.; syed, m. sharing stories of discrimination with parents. j. adolesc. 2014, 37, 303–312. [crossref] [pubmed] sanchez-castello, m.; navas, m.; ordonez-carrasco, j.l.; rojas, a.j. acculturation and adaptation of adolescents with immigrant backgrounds in spain: psychosocial profiles of latent classes (aculturacion y adaptacion de adolescentes de origen inmigrante en espana: perfiles psicosociales de clases latentes). int. j. soc. psychol. 2020, 35, 560–588. [crossref] gil bermejo, j.l.; martos sanchez, c.; vazquez aguado, o.; garcia-navarro, e.b. adolescents, ambivalent sexism and social networks, a conditioning factor in the healthcare of women. healthcare 2021, 9, 721. [crossref] lopez-saez, m.a.; platero, l.; langarita, j.a.; sadurni, n. professional insights into navigating support for lgbti children in spain. sex. res. soc. policy 2024, 1–13. [crossref] harrell, s.p. racism and life experiences scales: racial hassles; american psychological association: washington, dc, usa, 1997. [crossref] krieger, n.; smith, k.; naishadham, d.; hartman, c.; barbeau, e.m. experiences of discrimination: validity and reliability of a self-report measure for population health research on racism and health. soc. sci. med. 2005, 61, 1576–1596. [crossref] bakolis, i.; thornicroft, g.; vitoratou, s.; rusch, n.; bonetto, c.; lasalvia, a.; evans-lacko, s. development and validation of the discus scale: a reliable short measure for assessing experienced discrimination in people with mental health problems on a global level. schizophr. res. 2019, 212, 213–220. [crossref]  
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secondary_title_index: psychological assessment
title_index:
       multilevel irt analysis of the everyday discrimination scale and the racial/ethnic discrimination index.     

full_text_index:
       psychological assessment  2021 american psychological association issn: 1040-3590  2021, vol. 33, no. 7, 637–651 https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000906  multilevel irt analysis of the everyday discrimination scale and the racial/ethnic discrimination index ye feng1, yuen mi cheon2, tiffany yip1, and heining cham1 1  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  2  department of psychology, fordham university department of child development and education, myongji university  unfair treatment based on race is an unfortunate reality. while there is increasing interest in mapping the daily and longer-term impact of discrimination in psychology, studies that examine the psychometric properties of indicators spanning these timeframes are limited. item response analysis examined the measurement characteristics of two daily measures of ethnic/racial discrimination: (a) the six-item racial/ ethnic discrimination index (redi), and (b) the modified five-item everyday discrimination scale (eds; williams et al., journal of health psychology, 1997, 2, 335). this study investigated whether the two scales can be appropriately adapted to access adolescents’ daily-level ethnic/racial discrimination experiences. both measures were administered for 14 consecutive days in a sample of 350 adolescents attending public schools in a large, urban area. results suggest that the redi has high loading and high difficulty. all redi items functioned similarly at daily and person levels, suggesting that any single redi item measured on a single day is sufficient for measuring daily ethnic/racial discrimination experiences. the eds also shows high loading and high difficulty. however, eds items functioned differently at the daily and person levels. redi items were invariant across gender and race/ethnicity (african americans, asians, and latinx). recommendations for measuring daily ethnic/racial discrimination are discussed.  public significance statement this study investigates two measures of everyday racial/ethnic discrimination: the everyday discrimination scale (eds) and the racial/ethnic discrimination index (redi). our analyses suggest that the latter is a more sensitive measure of everyday racial/ethnic discrimination (red) when administered at the daily level. keywords: racial/ethnic discrimination, daily diary, multilevel item response theory supplemental materials: https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000906.supp  studies of red began with a focus on lifetime discrimination and major discriminatory events such as housing or employment discrimination (collins & essed, 1992; pager & shepherd, 2008; ziegert & hanges, 2005). at the same time, researchers recognized that red also exists in everyday interactions in more subtle, but no less harmful ways (sue, 2010). research finds that “everyday” experiences of red comprise a larger percentage of exposure compared to major life events (kessler et al., 1999). contemporary researchers have come to understand that red takes many forms and encompasses both major and everyday events. in order to develop a holistic picture of how red is implicated in mental and physical health, it is necessary to study the discrimination at the person (i.e., how it varies from one person to the next) and the daily (i.e., how it varies from one day to the next for the same person) levels, respectively capturing major and everyday discrimination. though there has been interest in studying the red at both daily and person levels, only a few studies have distinguished the source of variability between daily-level red and person-level red (seaton & iida, 2019; torres & ong, 2010), and no study has examined the daily red measure systematically. the current study addresses this gap in the literature with an item response analyses of two measures of red assessed at both the person and the daily levels.  red is considered to be differential or unfair treatment on the basis of ethnicity or race and is a normative experience for racial/ethnic minorities in the united states (williams & williams-morris, 2000). a large and growing body of systematic reviews and meta-analyses have found that red is associated with negative mental health outcomes such as psychological distress, depression and anxiety, academic outcomes, and negative physical health outcomes, such as increased blood pressure and risky health behaviors at various points along with the lifespan (benner et al., 2018; paradies, 2006; paradies et al., 2015; schmitt et al., 2014; williams & mohammed, 2009).  this article was published online first april 1, 2021. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5528-6822 ye feng https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7488-533x tiffany yip https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2933-056x heining cham we have no known conflict of interest to disclose. this research was supported by a grant awarded to tiffany yip and warren tryon from the national science foundation, development and learning sciences (bcs—1354134) and a grant awarded to tiffany yip from the national institute on minority health and health disparities (r21md011388). correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to ye feng, department of psychology, fordham university, 441 east fordham road, bronx, ny, united states. email: yfeng25@fordham.edu 637  
  638  feng, cheon, yip, and cham  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  measuring racial/ethnic discrimination the growing interest in measuring the impact of red is reflected in the number of measures that have been used in the literature. recent meta-analyses and systematic reviews find that there are 36–123 measures of red (benner et al., 2018; carter et al., 2019; yip, wang, et al., 2019), reflecting the considerable variability in measuring the construct of racial/ethnic discrimination. four sources of variability can be identified. first, scales employ different time frames for retrospective responses (e.g., past month, past year; mouzon et al., 2017). second, some measures focus on the frequency of racial/ethnic discriminatory events in a checklist format (williams & mohammed, 2009), while other measures incorporate an assessment of impact (fisher et al., 2000; harrell, 2000). third, there is variability in the number of items or measures assessing red ranging from single items (gee et al., 2007; kessler et al., 1999; krieger et al., 2005) to multiple items or multidimensional scales (lewis et al., 2012; schulz et al., 2006; shariff-marco et al., 2011). fourth, there is variability in the extent to which measures interrogate the form and the perpetrator of discrimination, for example, in-person discrimination versus online discrimination, overt discrimination versus subtle discrimination, and vicarious versus personal experiences (benner et al., 2018; tynes et al., 2008). to this list, there is a dearth of evidence-based guidelines about measuring red across days and individuals. one of the most widely used red measures is the eds (williams et al., 1997). the eds is a 10-item self-report scale that was developed to measure discrimination experiences over a prescribed period of time (e.g., past year, past 6 months; williams et al., 1997). the original eds focused on discrimination broadly, not specifically attributable to race/ethnicity. more recently, researchers have modified the scale to focus specifically on race/ethnicity with two approaches: (a) incorporating an attribution of race/ethnicity into the stem of the questions (krieger, 2012), and (b) creating a branching design where respondents are first asked to indicate discrimination and followed by an attribution to a specific social category (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, age, etc.). despite research showing that the branching approach generates a much higher response frequency than the race-attributed approach (shariff-marco et al., 2009, 2011), researchers interpret the results of the two approaches as comparable. as such, there are methodological reasons to be weary of comparing prevalence estimates of red across the two approaches.  the psychometrics of measuring racial/ethnic discrimination the eds has been widely used to assess discrimination and its associations with various developmental outcomes from physical to mental health (gee et al., 2007; schulz et al., 2006; williams & mohammed, 2009), and across different racial/ethnic groups including african americans, asian-americans, latinx and pacific islanders (chan et al., 2012; lewis et al., 2012; shariff-marco et al., 2011). most analyses of the factor structure have concluded that the eds comprises a single dimension of discrimination (bernstein et al., 2011; clark et al., 2004; lewis et al., 2012; reeve et al., 2011; shariff-marco et al., 2011) with few exceptions (e.g., guyll et al., 2001). previous studies focused on the psychometric properties of the eds reported high internal consistency (ranged from .81 to .88; lewis et al., 2012; reeve et al., 2011; shariff-marco et al.,  2011) and validity (moderate to strong association with similar measures of red; harnois et al., 2019; krieger et al., 2005). despite these psychometric analyses, there has been less item-level analysis of the eds or other discrimination measures. item-level analyses are particularly useful for researchers who wish to use abbreviated, or single-item measures in daily diary methods or other intensive repeated measures. this is a particular concern for scholars who are interested in everyday discrimination, its prevalence, and its health correlates. item response theory (irt) is one statistical procedure to investigate the psychometric properties of discrimination items. irt uses probability functions to model the relationships between the categorical items and the latent trait (red). the probability functions include parameters to evaluate the performance of items and explain the differences in person’s responses to items. for example, a two-parameter logistic (2-pl) model, involves two parameters to model the relationships between the binary items and the latent trait: difficulty and loading. in the 2-pl model, the difficulty parameter is the value of the latent trait where the probability of an affirmative response is 50%. the loading parameter represents how well the items differentiate against different levels of the latent trait (de ayala, 2009). based on the item parameters, researchers can modify scales such as eliminating redundant items that have similar item difficulty and loading with other items and identifying the estimating power of scales using test information functions. irt framework also allows researchers to test whether the red items are invariant across diverse populations (e.g., race/ethnicity). measurement invariance means that persons from different populations have the same probabilities in the item responses, given the same level of the latent trait.  application of irt method to the everyday discrimination scale the following section reviews studies that have applied irt methods to the eds (berenbon, 2020; lewis et al., 2012; stucky et al., 2011), and discusses how the current study contributes to this body of work. it is worth mentioning that the studies reviewed here examine the eds at the person level, with a particular focus on measurement invariance across certain groups (e.g., gender and race). stucky et al. (2011) used irt to examine the nine-item eds in two samples (study 1: 589 african american law school students, study 2: 3,527 nationally representative community sample). results supported a revised eds with only five items. in addition, three items were noninvariant across gender: not as smart, dishonest, insulted/harassed. the revised eds had satisfactory predictive validity to similar measures of overt discrimination. lewis et al. (2012) tested the invariance of the 10-item eds across race/ethnicity (african american, chinese, hispanic, japanese, and white) among 3,295 middle-aged american women and found three noninvariant eds items: poorer service, dishonest, treated with less courtesy. most recently, berenbon (2020) used irt to study the nine-item eds using a national sample (n 2,666). the eds items showed high loadings and high precision of measurement. one item (i.e., afraid of you) was noninvariant across gender. taken together, these three studies provide suggestions that certain eds items may function differently for men and women when administered at the person level. the current study builds upon this literature by testing invariance of the eds scale administered at the daily and the person levels, across both gender and race/ethnicity.  
  multilevel irt on daily ethnic/racial discrimination  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  measuring racial/ethnic discrimination at the daily level despite being assessed as a primarily person-level construct, red is ultimately a daily-level phenomenon. this is especially true for “everyday” indicators of red. in recent years psychologists have begun to assess red using daily diary methods, intensive repeated measures, and novel methodological techniques to more closely link measurement to the lived experience of the construct. using intensive repeated measures, respondents provide several measures of discrimination, typically at a daily frequency over a period of 1–2 weeks (seaton et al., 2011; torres & ong, 2010). the daily red assessment has several advantages. first, daily assessment can unpack how much of daily red experiences are attributable to between-person (i.e., individual differences between participants) and within-person effects (i.e., daily variability due to context or person context interaction). this enables researchers to investigate the relationship between red and other outcomes (e.g., mental health) at both daily (within-person) and person (between-person) levels. second, daily assessments minimize retrospective recall biases resulting in more accurate reports (bolger et al., 2003; iida et al., 2012). third, although red does not occur every day (seaton & iida, 2019; torres & ong, 2010), daily assessments better approximate the prevalence of red over time. to date, research employing daily diary designs report that red is relatively low frequency, occurring approximately 1–2.44 times/ week among ethnic minority adolescents and young adults. however, despite research suggesting that discrimination is not an everyday occurrence (seaton & douglass, 2014; seaton & iida, 2019; torres & ong, 2010; yip, cheon, et al., 2019; yip, wang, et al., 2019), it is a normative experience for most everyone (seaton & douglass, 2014; seaton & iida, 2019). the existing evidence makes clear the utility of measuring red at the daily level (seaton & douglass, 2014; seaton & iida, 2019), however, systematic psychometric analyses are limited. in the absence of psychometric analyses of daily measures, researchers have modified existing multi-item person-level measures (e.g., daily life experiences; seaton et al., 2009) or selected single items to assess daily red (e.g., hoggard et al., 2015; seaton & iida, 2019). for example, the eds (williams et al., 1997) has been adopted as a daily red measure while the psychometric properties of this adaption have not yet been investigated (goosby et al., 2018; yip, cheon, et al., 2019). two key aims motivate this study: first, when administered daily, it is unclear how each eds item contributes to the overall measure. the eds is a compilation of multiple items, each measuring a discrete event (e.g., being threatened or harassed). when items are aggregated, it is unclear if one or two items are driving the overall prevalence of red or if all the items are necessary to represent an individual’s daily discrimination experiences. this analysis has practical applications as measures that are administered daily are optimized for brevity to minimize participant burden. second, current studies have not partitioned the relative and independent contributions of the daily level (within-person) and person level (between-person) variability. the inability to separate within and between variability leaves open whether red is an inherently person-level phenomenon (i.e., a characteristic of the respondent) or a (person environment) interaction, which raises concerns related to construct validity across the levels. the ability to distinguish sources of variability has important implications for interventions aimed to disrupt the negative effects of discrimination stress. to date, studies  639  that investigate average scores across multiple days run the risk of conflating results at different levels, this introduces measurement error in making comparisons across groups. to address these limitations and to disentangle the measurement model for within- and between-person data, the multilevel extension of the 2pl irt model is employed to account for the nested data structure.  current study using daily diary data collected from african american, asian american, and latinx adolescents across 14 days, this study used multilevel irt to study the psychometric properties of two ethnic/ racial discrimination measures: the eds (williams, et al., 1997), and the redi (wang & yip, 2020). both measures were administered at the daily and person levels to the same adolescent sample. measurement invariance across racial/ethnic groups (african american, asian american, and latinx) and gender is also investigated. the results of these analyses form the basis of our recommendations for assessing the daily experiences of red.  method participants the data for this study came from a 4-year longitudinal study among ethnic/racial minority adolescents (wang & yip, 2020). a total of 350 students from 5 high schools in a large, urban area participated and the study was approved by the relevant institutional review boards. the schools were ethnically/racially diverse, as indicated by the simpson (1949) diversity index (median .51, ranged from .29 to 62), which means the probability that two randomly selected students within the same school were from different ethnic/racial groups (wang & yip, 2020). on average, these schools had 31% african americans (4%–63%), 15% asian americans (3%–57%), 46% latinx (21%–50%), and 6% whites (2%–16%). there were 108 males (31%; mage 14.31, sd .61) and 242 females (69%; mage 14.26, sd .61). the sample included 76 (22%) participants identifying as african american, 145 (41%) as asian american, and 129 (37%) as latinx. among the asian americans: 69% identified as chinese, 8% as korean, and 23% as other. among the latinx, 43% identified as puerto rican, 14% as dominican, 11% as mexican, 7% as south american, 4% central american, and 18% as other. participants reported their parents’ highest level of education as high school or below (36% for mothers, 36% for fathers), and as above high school (34% for mothers, 23% for fathers). many participants did not know their parent’s highest education levels (30% for mothers, 41% for fathers).  procedures all african american, asian american, and latinx ninth-grade students in five schools in a large, urban area were invited to participate in a study focused on stress and development. invitation letters were mailed to parents and only students with parental consent participated. across the schools, the response rate varied from 6% to 31%, reflecting the challenging circumstances of the participating schools (i.e., 52%–86% socioeconomically disadvantaged students). many home addresses were not verifiable and invitation letters were returned as undeliverable. data were collected in five cohorts (cohort 1: n 90, cohort 2: n 103, cohort 3:  
  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  640  feng, cheon, yip, and cham  n 25, cohort 4: n 67, cohort 5: n 96) across successive school years from 2015 to 2017. the cohorts did not differ on age, gender, race/ethnicity, or mother’s and father’s education level. participants met in groups of 1 to 10 students after school dismissal, were assented to the study and completed an online demographic questionnaire. participants were then given a dataenabled electronic tablet to access the 5–7-min daily web-based daily diary survey, including eds (williams et al., 1997) and redi (wang & yip, 2020). to measure person-level demographic information, a baseline assessment (premeasure) was conducted before the beginning of the daily diary survey. participants were instructed to complete the daily diary survey before bedtime for 14 days. research assistants monitored the compliance of the daily diary survey, and the average completion rate was 79% ( 11.1 days–out of maximum 14 days, sd 9%, range 65%–97%). at the end of the 14 days, participants returned the tablet, completed another online survey, and were compensated 20. all surveys were administered on qualtrics.  table 1 items of everyday discrimination scale (eds) and racial-ethnic discrimination index (redi) everyday discrimination scale (eds) discrimination frequency (df) item 1. today, i was treated with less courtesy or respect than other people 2. today, i received poorer service than others in restaurants or stores 3. people act as if i was not smart 4. people act as if they were afraid of me 5. today, i was threatened or harassed  attrition to race/ ethnicity (aer)  total %  participant %  total %  participant %  3.08  26.38  1.80  28.25  1.26  9.86  1.06  16.56  3.50  24.64  1.88  29.55  1.74  14.20  1.10  17.21  1.16  9.86  .54  8.44  measures everyday discrimination scale the five-item eds (williams et al., 1997) is a short version of the self-report measure that assesses participant’s experiences of discrimination over a prescribed period of time. we explored a new five-item eds developed based on the results of stucky et al. (2011) and the characteristics of diverse racial/ethnic minority adolescents. in particular, we replaced three out of five items of stucky et al. (2011) five-item version to account for the different sample characteristics. for example, “insulted” item was replaced with its locally dependent item “harassed,” and “dishonest” item was replaced with “afraid” item as the study suggested that asian american students reported experiences of physical and verbal harassment by peers at school, while african american and latinx students reported discrimination by adults, such as teachers, police, and shopkeepers (rosenbloom & way, 2004). due to the comment about african american and latinx adolescents’ experiences with shopkeepers, we chose to include the “service” item. furthermore, we removed the “better than you” item as kim et al (2014) cautioned the use of this item for the asian and latinx populations (see supplemental materials, table 2 for detailed comparison). the eds has been adapted for daily use with african american adolescents (goosby et al., 2018). for the daily diary survey, instructions were modified to reflect the day’s experiences (e.g., “today, i received poorer service than others in restaurants or stores”). branching logic assessed discrimination frequency and attribution to race/ethnicity with separate items. specifically, the discrimination frequency dimension (eds-df; table 1) asked participants whether they experienced discrete instances of discrimination (0 no, 1 yes). if participants indicated “yes,” they were asked the degree to which the experience was attributed to race/ ethnicity (eds-aer): “how sure are you that this happened because of your race/ethnicity?” on a four-point scale (0 not at all, 1 not very sure, 2 somewhat sure, 3 very sure).  racial/ethnic discrimination index redi is a six-item self-report measure developed to assess ethnic/ racial discrimination (table 1, wang & yip, 2020). for daily  racial/ethnic discrimination index (redi)  item  total %  participant %  1. i was treated unfairly because of my race/ethnicity 2. i felt stress because of my race/ethnicity 3. others treated me poorly because of my race/ethnicity 4. i was teased because of my race/ethnicity 5. i felt uncomfortable because of my race/ethnicity 6. i felt unsafe because of my race/ethnicity  3.02 4.93 3.04  18.84 24.06 17.39  3.21 3.64 2.80  17.68 19.71 16.23  note. in eds, when the participants responded “yes” to the df item, they are asked whether race/ethnicity attributed (aer) to the discriminative experience: “how sure are you that this happened because of your race?.” participants responded to the aer item using a 4-point scale (1 not at all, 2 not very sure, 3 somewhat sure, 4 very sure). total % indicates the percentage of reported the occurrence of the item. participant % indicates the percentage of participants who reported at least one occurrence of the item.  administration, the redi includes a 3-point scale (0 did not happen/was not a problem today, 1 somewhat of a problem today, and 2 very much a problem today).  analytic plan analyses were performed on eds-df, eds-aer, and redi. at the daily level, the missing data rate for eds-df, eds-aer, and redi are 23%, 22.74%, and 22.8%, respectively. daily observations with no responses to all the items are the main contributor of the missingness and were excluded from analyses by mplus, resulting in a final analytic sample of 3,799 observations for eds scales and 3,784 observations for redi. in the final sample, the correlation between the missingness of eds-df, eds-aer, and redi items and gender, nativity, race, and parents’ education (rs .04) were examined and there were no significant correlations, suggesting that the missingness in daily items were missing completely at random. maximum likelihood estimation accounted for the missing responses (schafer & graham, 2002). the low response frequency of categories (fewer than 1%) caused data  
  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  multilevel irt on daily ethnic/racial discrimination  sparseness and could make irt model estimation unstable, therefore, response options were collapsed for analysis. for eds-aer items, response 1 (not very sure), 2 (somewhat sure), and 3 (very sure) were collapsed.1 the outcomes of eds-aer items were dichotomized into two categories with no ( 0) and yes ( 1 or 2 or 3). for all redi items, response options 1 (somewhat a problem today) and 2 (very much a problem today) were collapsed. all items of redi were collapsed into dichotomous variables. given the multilevel data structure of daily diary observations (level 1) nested within participants (level 2), the variability of the eds-df, eds-aer, and redi items, as well as the unweighted composite scores of eds-df, eds-aer, and redi at both levels, were assessed using the intraclass correlation (icc). the icc is the ratio of variance at level 2 to the total variance (kaps & lamberson, 2009),2 with zero indicating that the variance is completely attributable to level 1 differences (i.e., daily differences) and one indicating that the variance is completely attributable to level 2 differences (i.e., individual differences). the average icc of edsdf items was .61 (ranging from .45 to .70) and the icc of their unweighted composite score was .48. the average icc of edsaer items was .69 (ranging from .50 to .80) and the icc of their unweighted composite score was .56. the average icc of redi items was .74 (ranging from .69 to .76) and the icc of their unweighted composite score was .69. these iccs indicate that more than half of the variance in daily discrimination experiences can be attributed to individual differences; however, contextual and daily variability is also evident. these values are consistent with the icc of african american adolescents’ daily red ( .64) from seaton and iida (2019). seaton and iida conducted a daily diary assessment of 103 african american adolescents (13–18 years old) using the 18-item daily life experiences subscale of the racism and life experiences scale (seaton et al., 2009). since this study shares an inclusion of african american adolescents, a 14-day daily diary assessment, and an adolescent sample, the icc of daily red should be comparable. in summary, results support the use of multilevel irt to capture the daily and individual differences.  multilevel item response theory analysis for the dichotomous eds-df, eds-aer, and redi items (with the collapsed two category responses), the following two-level irt models were fit for 1-pl, two-parameter logistic (2-pl), and 2-pl variant models. the probability function of an item in the two-level 2-pl model is written as: pdqijk 1jθjk , αi , λt  1 person  αi χday θk i θjk λi  1 e  where p(•) is the probability function, qijk is the response (0 not being discriminated or 1 being discriminated) of the dichotomous item i on day j by person k. the vector θjk contains the daily level latent trait θjk and the participant level latent trait θk the latent traits are assumed to be normally distributed and are standardized for model identification. the item intercept αi reflects the relationship between the item difficulty and loading parameter (difficulty bi α/λ). the difficulty-loading form does not generalize well to the multilevel irt model, the intercept-loading parameterization was adopted for all irt models. the vector λ contains the item loading on the latent trait at the daily level λiday and participant level λiperson (i.e., item  641  differential capability to detect discrimination). higher loading indicates stronger item differential capability to detect discrimination. for multilevel model identification, either a loading at each level of analysis (daily and person) has to be constrained to 1 or constraining the variances of the random terms to 1. we constrained the loading to 1 in the multilevel-irt models for the purpose of comparing the variability of each level of analysis. if λiperson are supposed to have the same differentiate capacity across persons, then λiperson are constrained to 1 and the 2-pl model becomes the 2-pl(p) model. similarly, the 2-pl(d) is another variant of the 2-pl model which the λiday are assumed to have the same differentiate capacity across time. if all the item loadings λiday and λiperson are set to 1, then the 2-pl model reduces to the 1-pl model. before testing these irt models, the item correlations of the eds discrimination frequency and redi were calculated. the likelihood-ratio tests were used to comparing nested irt models, and akaike information criterion (aic), and bayesian information criterion (bic) were reported as supporting evidence for model comparisons and were used for comparing nonnested models. for the likelihood-ratio test, a nonsignificant result between the two models (e.g., 1-pl vs. 2-pl) supported the more restricted model (1-pl). models with smaller aic and bic had better model fit.  measurement invariance across gender and race/ ethnicity after selecting the best fitting multilevel-irt models for edsdf, eds-aer, and redi, measurement invariance across gender (male and female) and race/ethnicity (african american, asian american, and latinx) was tested. first, we used multigroup analysis (liu et al., 2017; millsap & yun-tein, 2004) to test the invariance of the selected model as a whole, which involves a stepwise sequence of models that constrained the item loadings and item intercepts across groups was fit. consecutive invariance models were tested by the likelihood-ratio test. models were also compared using aic and bic. second, we used multilevel logistic regression to test the differential item functioning (dif) of each item. when grouping is a between cluster variable, dif analyses are straightforward at this level as it does not vary within the daily level (ryu, 2014). therefore, the analysis was conducted by add person-level direct effects to the multilevel-irt model from the grouping variables to items to capture uniform dif with respect to thresholds. dif was tested by likelihood-ratio test that comparing the model with and without the direct effect of the grouping variable.  the frequency of response “1” is relatively low in our sample. collapsing response “1” and “0” yielded consistent results. 2 the iccs of the eds discrimination frequency and redi items were calculated using this formula: σμ2/(σμ2 π2/3), where σμ2 is the level-2 variance of the item estimated by the two-level logistic regression model (daily diary observations nested within participants) of each item without any predictor. the iccs of the unweighted composite scores of eds discrimination frequency and redi were calculated using this formula: σμ2/(σ2 σμ2 π2/3), where σ2 and σμ2 are the level-3 and level-2 variances estimated by the threelevel logistic regression model (items nested within daily diary observations nested within participants). 1  
  642  feng, cheon, yip, and cham  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  results the examination of response frequency was conducted before the irt analysis. for the eds, 155 (45%) participants reported experiencing discrimination (endorsed at least one item over the 14 days of the study). item 3 (not smart) was the most endorsed. consistent with previous findings, endorsements for eds items were relatively low occurring approximately less than once over the course of 14 days (mdf .30, sddf .65; maer .18, sdaer .53). there were no gender (df: t(348) .64, p .52; aer: t(348) .04, p .97) or racial/ethnic differences (df: f(2, 347) 1.57, p .21; aer: f(2, 347) .67, p .51). for the redi, 30% of the sample endorsed at least one redi item, and item 2 (felt stress because of race/ethnicity) was the most commonly endorsed item. participants endorsed an average of .47 incidents (sd 1.37) over the 2 weeks. there were no gender [t(226) .80, p .42] or ethnic/racial differences [f(2, 347) .14, p .87]. table 2 shows the item correlations for eds-df, eds-aer, and redi at the daily level (upper diagonal) and person level (lower diagonal). at the person level, eds-df, eds-aer, and redi items had high correlations among each other (rs .87), suggesting that the items functioned similarly at this level for both scales. at the daily level, eds-df and eds-aer had low to moderate correlations (rs ranging from .07 to .71), suggesting that these items functioned differently at this level. on the other hand, redi items had high correlations among each other at this level (rs .88), suggesting that redi items functioned similarly at this level.  multilevel irt two-level 1-pl and 2-pl models for the eds-df, eds-aer, and redi were fit to the data (see table 3). the likelihood-ratio tests showed that the 2-pl demonstrated a better fit than the 1-pl, and the aic and bic also generally favored the 2-pl model for eds-df, eds-aer, and redi. in the 2-pl model of eds-df, table 2 item correlations of eds and redi at the daily level (upper diagonal) and person level (lower diagonal) item  1  2  3  eds discrimination frequency (df) .39 .37 1 1 .80 .34 2 1 .81 .62 3 1 4 .79 .76 .84 .90 .63 .79 5 eds attrition to race/ethnicity (aer) .31 .37 1 1 2 .90 1 .25 .87 .93 3 1 .93 .83 .89 4 .91 .82 .92 5 redi .99 .99 1 1 .90 .96 2 1 .98 .89 3 1 4 .99 .91 .99 .95 .94 .96 5 .98 .91 .98 6  4  5  .20 .37 .30 1 .72  .40 .27 .40 .43 1  .07 .10 .31 1 .86  .12 .20 .40 .71 1  .88 .91 .92 1 .97 .98  .92 .93 .96 .90 1 .96  6  .90 .94 .95 .93 .93 1  eds-aer, and redi, all the person-level item loadings were very similar to each other. therefore, a variant of the 2-pl model where person-level item loadings were constrained to be equal across all items was considered. the aic and bic supported that the fit of this model was better than all other models for eds-df, eds-aer, and redi and this 2-pl model was selected for interpretation and measurement invariance analysis. the item intercepts and daily-level item loadings of eds-df, eds-aer, and redi are presented in table 4. the item intercepts and loadings of eds-df and eds-aer were very similar. to better capture the red, the following analyses focus on the results of eds-aer. all eds-aer and redi items had high intercepts (eds-aer: intercepts 2; redi: intercepts 1.6), suggesting that only participants with high levels of the red would likely to respond “being the target of discrimination” on these items. for eds-aer, the daily-level item loadings ranged from .24 (item 4) to .84 (item 1) while all the person-level item loadings equaled 1. the higher the item loading value, the higher the probability of endorsing “being the target of discrimination” as the red level increases. in other words, higher item loadings reflected that the item had a stronger ability to differentiate a participant who experience discrimination from another participant who did not. results suggest that the eds-aer items had stronger differentiation ability at the person level than the daily level; and not all eds-aer items differentiated the daily observations equally well. for redi, the daily-level item loadings ranged from .87 (item 4) to .96 (item 1) while the person-level item loadings equaled 1, suggesting that all items had strong differentiation ability at both the daily and person levels. to further describe the relationships between the model parameters and item responses, figure 1 (panel a) shows the item characteristic curves of eds-aer and redi at the person level. the vertical axis is the response probability of the item and the horizontal axis is the z score of the latent trait at the person level. different lines in the plot represent different items. the daily-level latent trait z score was set to zero. both the eds-aer items and the redi items functioned similarly across person-level red. in other words, when used as a measure of person-level red, eds-aer, and redi should generate similar results. figure 1 (panel b) shows the item characteristic curves of edsaer and redi at the daily level. it shows that some eds-aer items had flatter curves due to low item loadings, some items had weak differential ability between participants with similar levels of red. in other words, the items were not informative enough to differentiate participants with low or high levels of red. for example, eds item 4 (“people act as if they are afraid of me.”) had the lowest loading (.39) and the flattest curve. a participant who had the person-level latent trait z score 0, and a daily-level latent trait z score of 5.0 only had a 20% chance of reporting red. on the other hand, all redi items had steep curves (larger item loadings), indicating that the redi items have higher loadings at the daily level. however, all of the redi item characteristic curves at the daily level provided no item information about the latent trait z scores 0, suggesting restricted utility to differentiate participants with low levels of red figure 2 shows the item information function (iif) and test information function (tif) of eds-aer and redi at the daily level. the person-level latent traits were set to zero. the item information curve is a function of the item parameters (intercepts,  
  643  multilevel irt on daily ethnic/racial discrimination  table 3 model fit of the two-level 1-pl and 2-pl for the eds and redi likelihood ratio test  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  model  number of parameters  aic  bic  comparison  δχ2  δ df  p values   1866.15  1851.09  1855.90  1852.08  3746.31 3732.17 3733.79 3726.16  3790.00 3825.81 3802.46 3794.83  1-pl 2-pl 2-pl  20.98 9.22 1.36  8 4 4  .007 .056 .851   1171.97  1154.33  1158.49  1161.49  2357.93 2338.66 2338.98 2344.98  2401.63 2432.30 2407.65 2378.70  1-pl 2-pl 2-pl  28.71 6.89 12.00  8 4 4   .001 .142 .017   1685.45  1639.29  1672.27  1650.83  3386.90 3314.58 3370.54 3327.67  3436.81 3426.87 3451.65 3408.77  1-pl 2-pl 2-pl  38.20 1467.91 12.59  10 5 5   .001  .001 .028  log-likelihood  eds discrimination frequency (eds-df) 1-pl 7 15 2-pl 11 2-pl(d) 11 2-pl(p) eds attribution to ethnicity/race (eds-aer) 7 1-pl 15 2-pl 11 2-pl(d) 2-pl(p) 11 racial/ethnic discrimination index (redi) 8 1-pl 18 2-pl 2-pl(d) 13 13 2-pl(p)  note. 2-pl(d) is a variant of the 2-pl model in which the daily-level item loadings are constrained to be equal across all items. 2-pl(p) is a variant of the 2-pl model in which the participant-level item loadings are constrained to be equal across all items. aic is akaike information criterion. bic is bayesian information criterion (bic). δχ2 is the χ2 difference. δ df is the difference of degrees of freedom.  loadings) of each item separately, and the test information curve is the sum of item information functions of the whole scale. item information .1 is regarded as satisfactory (de ayala, 2013). the item and test information curves can be used to show the precision (reliability) of the item and the test. results showed that the eds-aer items did not provide much information. only item 1 (“today, i was treated with less courtesy or respect than other people.”) reached item information of .1. these results suggest that the eds-aer items provided little precision to the scale. the highest daily-level information occurred at around the latent trait table 4 parameter estimates and standard errors (se) of the 2-pl model constraining equal participant-level item loadings in eds and redi intercept item  estimate  loading (daily) se  estimate  eds discrimination frequency (eds-df) 2.94 .29 .81 item 1 2.80 .25 .40 item 2 2.18 .16 .42 item 3 item 4 2.54 .18 .22 3.08 .32 .63 item 5 eds attribution to race/ethnicity (eds-aer) 3.22 .38 .84 item 1 item 2 2.71 .24 .37 2.44 .19 .46 item 3 2.66 .21 .24 item 4 3.07 .31 .38 item 5 racial/ethnic discrimination index (redi) 2.35 .23 .96 item 1 1.62 .12 .87 item 2 2.30 .24 .96 item 3 item 4 2.19 .21 .95 1.91 .19 .92 item 5 2.18 .22 .94 item 6  loading (participant)  se  estimate  se  .05 .14 .08 .13 .10  1 1 1 1 1  — — — — —  .05 .16 .08 .18 .24  1 1 1 1 1  — — — — —  .01 .04 .01 .01 .03 .02  1 1 1 1 1 1  — — — — — —  z score of 4, meaning that item 1 provided the highest precision at the higher range of red across latent trait. therefore, these items have more utility for populations with higher red levels. the test information curve had consistent results. eds-aer provided information .1 when the latent trait z score .0, suggesting that the scale is appropriate for the population with a higher level of red. for the redi, all the item characteristic curves were similar in shape, indicating that the items had very similar information. all redi items provided the most information when the daily-level red equaled 2 and provided limited information ( .1) when the daily-level latent trait z score .0 or 4.0. the redi items had moderate precision within a narrow range of the daily-level latent trait. the item information curves also suggested that item 2 (“i felt stress because of my race/ethnicity.”) provided the least information and item 3 (“others treated me poorly because of my race/ethnicity.”) provided the most information. the highest daily-level information occurred at around the latent trait z score of 2, meaning that item 3 is more accurate at detecting higher red levels. the test information curve had consistent results. redi provided information .1 when the latent trait z score .0, suggesting the scale is appropriate for populations with higher-level red. taken together, the results suggest that if a researcher is interested in reducing the number of items, item 2 can be dropped. if a researcher is interested in reducing redi to a single item, item 3 should be used. test information is the sum of all the item information in a scale, both the item precision and test length can affect the value. even the redi had higher test information than eds-aer, neither redi nor edsaer had adequate test information ( 4) across latent traits, suggesting that the measurement precision is not acceptable.  measurement invariance across gender and race/ ethnicity the likelihood-ratio tests, aic, and bic of the factorial invariance test of eds-aer and redi across race/ethnicity (african  
  644  feng, cheon, yip, and cham  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  figure 1 item characteristic curves of eds-aer and redi. in the top panel, the daily-level latent trait z score was set to 0. in the bottom panel, the participant-level latent trait z score was set to 0. different lines represent different items. (a) item characteristic curves conditional on participant-level red. (b) item characteristic curves conditional on daily-level red  note. see the online article for the color version of this figure.  americans, asian americans, and latinx) and gender (males and females) are presented in table 5. for eds-aer, the likelihoodratio tests, aic, and bic all supported that the item daily-level loadings and intercepts were invariant across race/ethnicity and gender. therefore, the measurement invariance of item daily-level  loadings and intercepts of eds-aer across race/ethnicity and gender was supported. for redi, the likelihood-ratio tests and aic did not support invariance across race/ethnicity for the daily-level item loadings and intercepts. a careful examination of the baseline model showed  
  multilevel irt on daily ethnic/racial discrimination  645  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  figure 2 item information function and test information function of eds-aer and redi at the daily level. the participant-level latent traits were set to 0. in the item information function, different lines represent different items. (a) item information function. (b) test information function  note. see the online article for the color version of this figure.  that the daily-level loading and intercept for item 2 (“i felt stress because of my racial/ethnic.”) were lower for african americans compared to asian americans and latinx, african americans were more likely to endorse the item compared to asian americans and latinx and the item had smaller loading for african americans at the daily-level. the invariance model was revised by allowing the dailylevel loading and intercept for item 2 to vary across race/ethnicity. the likelihood-ratio test, aic, and bic supported the partial loading invariance model. bic also supported the partial daily-level loading and intercept invariance model. therefore, the measurement invariance of the daily-level loadings and intercepts (with the exception of item 2) across race/ethnicity was supported for the redi measure and future work should consider administering the  redi excluding item 2. the likelihood-ratio tests and bic supported that the item daily-level loadings and intercepts were invariant across gender. examination of the item daily-level loadings and intercepts in the baseline model without these parameters constrained to be invariant across gender did not show any estimates to be different across gender. therefore, the measurement invariance of the redi was supported across gender. to the best of our knowledge, there was no simulation study that has systematically examined the required sample size for the multilevel factorial invariance test for categorical items (liu et al., 2017). thus, we conducted post hoc analysis of the factorial invariance tests across gender and racial/ethnic groups through simulations (see supplemental materials, table 3). for each  
  646  feng, cheon, yip, and cham  table 5 measurement invariance test of eds-aer and redi across ethnicity/race and gender likelihood ratio test  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  invariance model  number of parameters  log-likelihood  aic  eds attribution to ethnicity/race (eds-aer): invariance across ethnicity/race 2-pl(p) 35  1509.16 3088.33  1513.22 3080.44 loading 27  1522.59 3083.18 loading intercept 19 eds attribution to ethnicity/race (eds-aer): invariance across gender 2-pl(p) 23  1367.54 2789.07  1369.34 2776.67 loading 19  1370.61 2771.23 loading intercept 15 racial/ethnic discrimination index (redi): invariance across ethnicity/race 2-pl(p) 41  1958.85 3999.69  1984.13 4030.25 loading 31  2004.89 4051.78 loading intercept 21  1965.52 3997.03 partial loading 33 partial loading intercept 25  1976.60 4003.20 racial/ethnic discrimination index (redi): invariance across gender  1843.87 3741.74 2-pl(p) 27  1851.16 3746.31 loading 22 loading intercept 17  1861.26 3756.52  comparison  δχ2  δ df  p value  3306.81 3248.99 3201.78  baseline loading  8.33 13.18  8 8  .40 .11  2932.65 2895.28 2864.86  baseline loading  6.97 2.11  4 4  .14 .72  4255.47 4223.65 4182.78 4202.90 4159.17  2-pl(p) loading baseline partial loading  28.66 27.99 6.95 72.54  10 10 8 8   .01  .01 .54  .01  3910.18 3883.56 3862.58  2-pl(p) loading  7.65 9.44  5 5  .18 .09  bic  note. 2-pl(p) is a variant of the 2-pl model in which the participant-level item loadings were constrained to be equal across all items. aic is akaike information criterion. bic is bayesian information criterion (bic). δχ2 is the χ2 difference. δ df is the difference of degrees of freedom. in the partial invariance model for redi across ethnicity/race, the loading and intercept of item 2 were not constrained to be invariant.  invariance test, 500 data sets were simulated based on the parameters of loading and intercept constrained model for each gender and race/ethnic group. power was estimated as the proportion of data sets that support the more constrained invariance model for each comparison. overall, results showed satisfactory statistical power ( .8) for the factorial invariance tests across gender and racial/ethnic groups using likelihood-ratio test, aic and bic. besides the factorial invariance of eds-aer and redi scales across ethnic/racial and gender groups, multilevel logistic regressions were conducted to test the differential item functioning (dif) of each item (table 6). unlike the results of factorial invariance, eds-aer items have shown significant dif. specifically, item 1 (“today, i was treated with less courtesy or respect than other people”), item 3 (“people act as if i was not smart.”) and item 5 (“today, i was threatened or harassed.”) showed significant dif between asian american versus african american and latinx. item 1 and item 3 also showed significant dif between gender groups. further examination of the direct effects suggested that asian americans (β 1.64) have less reported discrimination for item 1 and item 5 (β 2.03) compared with african americans and latinx and more reported discrimination for item 3 (β 1.10). male have less reported discrimination for item 1 (β 1.24), and more for item 3 (β .80) compared with female. no significant dif was observed between race and gender groups for redi items.  discussion this study evaluated the psychometric properties of two daily and person-level discrimination measures, the modified daily eds and the redi. the purpose of this study is to assess the psychometric properties of two measures of red at both the person- and dailylevel and to provide practical suggestions for future use. the study was conducted on a sample of adolescents who participated in a 14-day  daily diary study. the results supported a single-item solution for both scales as a daily measure. the two measures were assessed and compared with several multilevel-irt models. the multilevel-irt models allow us to make comparative evaluations across time and subject level by looking at irf and iif plots conditioned on different levels of subjects/time. both the eds-df and eds-aer supported a 2-pl model with constrain on person-level item loading. besides a lower response rate, there were no evident differences between eds-df and eds-aer, for example, item 3 (“not smart”) was most common item and item 4 (“afraid of me”) was the least informative item for table 6 differential item functioning test of eds-aer and redi across ethnicity/race and gender ethnicity/race item  african american  asian american  δχ2  δχ2  p value  p value  eds attribution to ethnicity/race (eds-aer) .46 .50 7.34 .01 item 1 .25 .62 .01 .91 item 2 1.18 .28 4.20 .04 item 3 3.46 .06 1.49 .22 item 4 .00* 1.00 13.75  .001 item 5 racial/ethnic discrimination index (redi) 1.21 1.00 1.02 1.00 item 1 4.79 .90 8.17 .61 item 2 .00* 1.00 .32 1.00 item 3 .00* 1.00 .00* 1.00 item 4 .01 1.00 .00* 1.00 item 5 13.53 .20 9.76 .46 item 6  gender δχ2  p value  96.72 1.25 4.76 .78 .03   .001 .26 .03 .38 .87  .10 .86 4.39 .04 8.63 .88  1.00 1.00 .93 1.00 .57 1.00  note. * indicates that the δχ2 was slightly negative. we rounded them to .00 instead.  
  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  multilevel irt on daily ethnic/racial discrimination  both measures. the parameter estimates for eds-df and eds-aer were very close, suggesting that even without the attribution to ethnic/racial, discrimination frequency items remain good indicators of red. all items in eds-aer and redi had substantial item intercepts. high intercepts indicate the most informative location on the latent traits. the items are more informative for participants with high levels of red. the person-level item loadings were all equal to 1 while the daily-level item loadings in eds-aer ranged from .24 (item 4) to .84 (item 1). the daily-level item loadings for the redi ranged from .87 (item 4) to .96 (item 1). the loadings are also illustrated in the item response function curves (figure 1). item loadings represent the ability to differentiate among participants on the basis of levels of red. therefore, the results of both scales suggest that the items had stronger differentiation ability at the person- versus the daily-level. comparing the two red measures, the eds-aer and redi items did not differentiate the daily observations equally well. item 4 (“afraid of me”) of eds-aer had low item loading at the daily level, suggesting that the item had weak differential ability between participants, while all redi items showed high item loadings, indicating that redi items had greater differential ability between participants. the results suggest that redi is a more informative indicator of daily-level red. there are conventions for acceptable thresholds for item loadings at the daily level. because the loadings reflect the degree to which an item, and the test as a whole, are measuring a latent trait, item loadings are interpreted in the context of the test which is being analyzed. items with low loadings (e.g., eds item 4) may be ambiguously worded or include a broader, less specified, range of experiences. eds item 4 (“people act as if they were afraid of me.”) refers to a wide range of behaviors with a higher level of ambiguity. as such, this item may have less differentiating information compared to more concrete items (e.g., “today, i was threatened or harassed.”). therefore, it is reasonable to consider eliminating this item. ideally, items with high levels of differential ability/loading and whose intercepts cover the interested latent construct continuum are retained. however, in practice, some items with large loadings cannot provide enough information for the interested latent construct continuum. considering the fact that discrimination is inherently a daily-level construct, the lower range on the continuum of daily-level red was of particular interest. it would be appropriate for scale construction to select items with smaller loadings that can add information to the lower range of red, too. one advantage of item response function curves (figure 1) is that it provides a straightforward visualization of the function of each item on the continuum of the latent trait. all redi items functioned similarly, with high item intercepts and loadings. the redi item response function curves of items overlapped with each other, suggesting that the items are interchangeable. all redi items had their maximal information at the higher end of the latent trait continuum, indicating that these items are more informative for participants with higher red levels. these irt results can be interpreted similar to a reliability, but the information can vary based on the location along the latent trait continuum. redi item 2 (“i felt stress because of my race/ethnicity.”) had the lowest information, while item 3 (“others treated me poorly because of my race/ethnicity.”) had the highest information. in practice, if only one redi item is retained to measure red, it should be the item  647  with the highest information, in this case, item 3. item 3 may be a more informative indicator of discrimination because it clearly implicates another person in an interaction, whereas item 2 does not make clear the source of the stress. future studies should seek to understand how these items may be understood and interpreted differently by racial/ethnic minority respondents. because red measures are often employed in large multigroup studies, it is important to establish measurement invariance. often researchers want to compare prevalence rates across different racial/ ethnic groups or compare experiences of the same group in different locations. factorial invariance tests and multilevel logistic regression were conducted for eds-aer and redi to investigate whether group differences could be attributed to true differences in race/ ethnicity or gender. the factorial invariance test results showed that daily-level loadings and intercept invariance was achieved for gender for both eds-aer and redi. the same type of invariance was also supported for eds-aer across race/ethnicity. on the other hand, the daily-level loading and intercept invariance was not achieved for race/ethnicity for redi. the dif test, on the contrary, suggested that eds-aer items failed to be invariant across gender and race groups. specifically, males have less discrimination reported for item 1 (“today, i was treated with less courtesy or respect than other people”), and more for item 3 (“people act as if i was not smart.”) compared with females. previous studies testing gender as a covariate showed that males reporting more experiences with everyday discrimination (seaton et al., 2008; sellers, & shelton, 2003), and stucky et al. (2011) found that “not as smart” is noninvariant across. our results confirm the findings with item 3, while the difference on item 1 suggesting that the difference between gender on feeling “less respect” might not reflect the true gender difference on red either. the factorial invariance test suggested that the daily-level loadings and intercept for item 2 (“i felt stress because of my race/ ethnicity”) were lower for african americans as compared to asian americans and latinx, such that the item is more likely to be endorsed by african americans than by asian americans and latinx. in other words, the item is better able to distinguish participants with higher daily-level red among african americans than among asian americans and latinx. a partial invariance model was established by removing the equal constraint for item 2, suggesting a partial measurement invariance of item daily-level loadings and intercepts (with the exception of item 2) for the redi measure across race/ethnicity. while dif test suggested that the dif indeed existed in three out of five items between asian american versus african american and latinx. asian americans reported less discrimination on item 1 (“less respect”) and item 5 (“threatened or harassed”) and more on item 3 (“not smart”) compared with african americans and latinx. previous studies have found that item “ : : : acted as if they’re better than you” have lower threshold for hispanic and asian groups compared to non-hispanic white and black groups (jang et al., 2009). most studies test the invariance of eds focuses on compare african american with other ethnic/racial groups, for example, shariff-marco et al. (2011) found that african americans were less likely to endorse items like “ : : : treated with less respect,” “ : : : acted as if they’re better than you” and “ : : : been threatened/harassed.,” and lewis et al. (2012) found that dif existed on item “ : : : treated with less courtesy” compared african american to caucasian group and item “ : : : receiving poorer service” compared african american with other groups (hispanic,  
  648  feng, cheon, yip, and cham  chinese, japanese and caucasian). our findings are intriguing that asian americans have differential responses in three out of five eds-aer items. giving asian american red are less studies in literature, and immigration-related factors might affect their red, researchers using eds studying red should be careful about noninvariant items. taken together, redi would be recommended to study red.  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  implications and conclusions two conclusions emerge from the current study. first, for both the eds and the redi, items functioned differently across person and daily levels, suggesting that researchers interested in the construct of discrimination need to align measure selection with the level of interest/analysis. previous research using daily indicators of red shows that it is an infrequent experience with red occurring approximately 1–2.44 times/week among ethnic minority adolescents and young adults days over a 2-week period, however, the percentages of adolescents who reported at least one discriminatory experiences has been observed to be as high as 97% (huynh & fuligni, 2010; seaton & douglass, 2014; torres & ong, 2010; wang & yip, 2020; yip, cheon, et al., 2019). despite its relative infrequency, these data suggest that daily red measures complement scales measured at the person level. second, the redi is a more informative measure of daily red compared to the eds. this recommendation is aligned with the original purpose of the measures. that is, the redi was designed as a daily-level indicator whereas the eds was developed as a personlevel measure; however, in the absence of a validated daily measure, the eds has been adapted for daily use. previous studies indicate that the eds-df yields a higher percentage of respondents reporting discriminatory experiences than directly querying participants about race-related discriminatory experiences (shariff-marco et al., 2011; williams & mohammed, 2009). however, due to the response burden of the daily dairy approach, the response rates were much lower than other study formats as the mean score of eds range from .09 to .32 using the daily dairy approach (seaton & iida, 2019; torres & ong, 2010; yip, wang, et al., 2019) while the estimates were closer to a 2 with one-time assessments (e.g., krieger et al., 2005; lewis et al., 2012; schulz et al., 2006). relative to existing research (e.g., .12, seaton & iida, 2019; .32, torres & ong, 2010), the average counts of discrimination occurrences on the eds-df (.30), eds-aer (.18), and redi (.47) were lower in the current study, especially for the eds-aer. although the response rate for eds-df is higher, it does not offer a clear advantage over measures that were explicitly developed for daily use. in order to be comparable with redi, the current study mainly focused on the item characteristics of eds-aer. given how infrequent daily red responses were in the current and other samples (seaton & douglass, 2014; seaton & iida, 2019; torres & ong, 2010), researchers who are interested in red may want to use the redi which makes a racial/ethnic attribution, or eds-aer which incorporates an attribution of racial/ethnic into the question stem. for redi, all items functioned very similarly according to the item loadings and intercepts. taking a close look at the content of each question, the questions can be grouped into two aspects: stressful (“ : : : feel stress : : : ,” “ : : : feel unsafe : : : ,” “ : : : feel uncomfortable : : : ”) and unfair (“ : : : treated unfairly : : : ,” “ : : : was teased : : : ,” “ : : : treated me poorly : : : ”). the item  response functions of redi items were largely overlapping, indicating that all questions are asking similar things; there is no difference between the two aspects mentioned before in terms of the responses (table 1). it is highly possible that if someone is the target of red on a given day, he/she would answer “yes” to all six items. these results suggest that the six-item scale can be reduced to one item. the item information curves show that item 2 (“i felt stress because of my race/ethnicity.”) provided the lowest information, and item 3 (“others treated me poorly because of my race/ethnicity”) has the highest information. to reduce respondent burden, the recommendation is to reduce the redi scale to a single-item scale retaining item 3. although the current study makes significant contributions to the measurement of daily discrimination experiences, several limitations need to be considered. first, response categories of redi were dichotomized for analysis due to low frequencies, and it is unclear if the difference between “was somewhat of a problem today” and “was very much a problem today” is meaningful, or if the distinction really lies between the presence and absences of red on a given day. second, although the results supported the 2-pl model with all factor loadings constrained to be the same at the person level for the eds-df, eds-aer, and redi, future research is needed to replicate this finding. third, the sample size of our study may have limited statistical power to test for highly parameterized irt models (e.g., 3pl and 4pl). our sample size (n 350) is above the average sample sizes of published daily diary assessments (average n 233; english et al., 2020; hoggard et al., 2015; huynh & fuligni, 2010; seaton & douglass, 2014; seaton & iida, 2019; torres & ong, 2010). moreover, our number of level-1 observations is comparable with studies that implemented multilevel-irt analysis (fox, 2004, 2005; gorter et al., 2015). our sample size allows us to test the 1-pl and 2-pl models for eds-df, eds-aer, and redi but not the more complicated 3-pl and 4-pl models. for example, the 4-pl models have addition lower and upper asymptote parameters of each item response function, which captures the behaviors that the participants who did not experience red reporting as such out of obligation, and the behaviors that the participants who experienced red not reporting as such. asparouhov and muthen (2020) suggested that a sample size of n 5,000 and 20,000 might be needed to estimate a 3-pl model and a 4-pl model “well,” respectively. adding priors for the model parameters to improve identifiability, yet we were unable to do so because the modified eds and redi are new or newly adopted for daily use and have not yet been studied as a measure for daily red. adding priors require switching the estimator from maximum likelihood to bayesian. measurement invariance test with bayesian estimation involves the consideration of choosing the exact or approximate test (e.g., de bondt & van petegem, 2015). this adds another layer of complexity. fourth, we conducted both factorial invariance test and dif test to study the measurement invariance for eds-aer and redi scales. giving the inconsistent results, the researcher should be cautious to compare red across gender and ethnic/racial groups. to better understand whether we have enough statistical power to detect small but systematic noninvariant items, we also conducted a post hoc power analysis for the factorial invariance tests based on the sample size and parameter estimates of each gender and race/ethnic group. results showed that we have a satisfactory statistical power ( .8) for the factorial invariance tests across gender and racial/ethnic groups using likelihood-ratio test, aic, and bic. we did not  
  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  multilevel irt on daily ethnic/racial discrimination  conduct the post hoc power analysis for the dif tests because the simulation for all 33 tests was very time-consuming. we believed that the comparison of our sample size with the average sample size of published daily diary assessments of ethnic/racial discrimination, as well as the post hoc power analysis results of the factorial invariance tests provided some support that our sample size was sufficient for the analyses. we acknowledge that the lack of sample size guidelines and requirements of multilevel-irt analysis poses challenges to the generalizability of our findings. however, we believe that the benefits of our study outweigh the statistical deficiencies. in sum, giving previous studies showed ethnic/racial differences in red measures (berenbon, 2020; lewis et al., 2012; stucky et al., 2011), researchers should be cautious making racial/ ethnic group comparisons. last, although our study adds a large and diverse group of adolescents to a literature that has focused on adults, age and our location in a large urban area may limit the generalizability of our results. these limitations point to fruitful areas for further research. despite these limitations, this article contributes to the extant literature and has implications for future research. our findings suggesting that redi is more appropriate for measuring red at the daily level and can be reduced to one item (“others treated me poorly because of my race/ethnicity”) to reduce respondent burden. moreover, our study is the first one to look at the psychometric properties of comparing two daily red measures. few studies have examined item response functions considering within-person as well as between-person variability. separating these levels of variability are important for studies that want to tease apart within- and between-person processes. for example, a within-person item function is important since daily discrimination measures are used in studies that provide implications for within- and between-person physical and mental health outcomes (hoggard et al., 2015; huynh et al., 2016; seaton & iida, 2019; torres & ong, 2010). in studies such as these, using reliable and valid measures of daily discrimination would be critical to providing accurate information for devising effective health-related prevention and intervention strategies. next, when measured at the daily level, both the eds-aer and redi items suggest that incorporating a racial/ethnic attribution makes items more informative than questions that ask about unspecified discrimination, and there was not a difference in terms of response frequency in daily measures. these results suggest that the more informative redi is a recommended for measuring daily discrimination. in the future, more studies with larger samples are needed to study the eds at a daily level with ethnic/racial attributions in question stems to exam the generalizability of our findings to other settings of daily study of red. finally, our study found that the redi items functioned similarly and can be reduced to one item scale with acceptable psychometric properties. being able to measure daily red with one item will contribute to reducing participant burden in daily diary studies. in the future, it is important to administer the redi scale with larger samples across longer periods of time.  references asparouhov, t., & muthen, b. 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  this document is copyrighted by the american psychological association or one of its allied publishers. this article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.  multilevel irt on daily ethnic/racial discrimination ethnic discrimination in health surveys: how best to ask the questions, in one or two stages, across multiple racial/ethnic groups? du bois review, 8(1), 159–177. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1742058x11000129 shariff-marco, s., gee, g. c., breen, n., willis, g., reeve, b. b., grant, d., ponce, n. a., krieger, n., landrine, h., williams, d. r., alegria, m., mays, v. m., johnson, t. p., & brown, e. r. (2009). a mixed-methods approach to developing a self-reported racial/ethnic discrimination measure for use in multiethnic health surveys. ethnicity & disease, 19(4), 447. simpson, e. h. (1949). measurement of diversity. nature, 163, 688. https:// doi.org/10.1038/163688a0 stucky, b. d., gottfredson, n. c., panter, a. t., daye, c. e., allen, w. r., & wightman, l. f. (2011). an item factor analysis and item response theorybased revision of the everyday discrimination scale. cultural diversity & ethnic minority psychology, 17(2), 175–185. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023356 sue, d. w. (2010). microaggressions in everyday life: race, gender, and sexual orientation. wiley. torres, l., & ong, a. d. (2010). a daily diary investigation of latino ethnic identity, discrimination, and depression. cultural diversity & ethnic minority psychology, 16(4), 561–568. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020652 tynes, b. m., giang, m. t., williams, d. r., & thompson, g. n. (2008). online racial discrimination and psychological adjustment among adolescents. the journal of adolescent health, 43(6), 565–569. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2008.08.021 wang, y., & yip, t. (2020). sleep facilitates coping: moderated mediation of daily sleep, ethnic/racial discrimination, stress responses, and adolescent well-being. child development, 91(4), e833–e852.  651  williams, d. r., & mohammed, s. a. (2009). discrimination and racial disparities in health: evidence and needed research. journal of behavioral medicine, 32(1), 20–47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-008-9185-0 williams, d. r., & williams-morris, r. (2000). racism and mental health: the african american experience. ethnicity & health, 5(3–4), 243–268. https://doi.org/10.1080/713667453 williams, d. r., yu, y., jackson, j. s., & anderson, n. b. (1997). racial differences in physical and mental health. journal of health psychology, 2(3), 335–351. https://doi.org/10.1177/135910539700200305 yip, t., cheon, y. m., wang, y., cham, h., tryon, w., & el-sheikh, m. (2019). racial disparities in sleep: associations with discrimination among ethnic/racial minority adolescents. child development, 91(3), 914–931. yip, t., wang, y., mootoo, c., & mirpuri, s. (2019). moderating the association between discrimination and adjustment: a meta-analysis of ethnic/racial identity. developmental psychology, 55(6), 1274–1298. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000708 ziegert, j. c., & hanges, p. j. (2005). employment discrimination: the role of implicit attitudes, motivation, and a climate for racial bias. journal of applied psychology, 90(3), 553–562. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010 .90.3.553  received may 8, 2020 revision received january 16, 2021 accepted january 20, 2021  e-mail notification of your latest issue online! would you like to know when the next issue of your favorite apa journal will be available online? this service is now available to you. sign up at https://my.apa.org/portal/alerts/ and you will be notified by e-mail when issues of interest to you become available!  
       


secondary_title_index: sociological methods &amp; research
title_index:
       the potential for using a shortened version of the everyday discrimination scale in population research with young adults: a construct validation investigation     

full_text_index:
       hhs public access author manuscript author manuscript  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29. published in final edited form as: sociol methods res. 2024 may ; 53(2): 804–838. doi:10.1177/00491241211067512.  the potential for using a shortened version of the everyday discrimination scale in population research with young adults: a construct validation investigation aprile d. benner1, shanting chen1, celeste c. fernandez1, mark d. hayward2 1department of human development and family sciences, university of texas at austin, austin,  author manuscript  tx, usa 2department of sociology, university of texas at austin, austin, tx, usa  abstract  author manuscript  discrimination is associated with numerous psychological health outcomes over the life course. the nine-item everyday discrimination scale (eds) is one of the most widely used measures of discrimination; however, this nine-item measure may not be feasible in large-scale population health surveys where a shortened discrimination measure would be advantageous. the current study examined the construct validity of a combined two-item discrimination measure adapted from the eds by add health (n 14,839) as compared to the full nine-item eds and a two-item eds scale (parallel to the adapted combined measure) used in the national survey of american life (nsal; n 1,111) and national latino and asian american study (nlaas) studies (n 1,055). results identified convergence among the eds scales, with high item-total correlations, convergent validity, and criterion validity for psychological outcomes, thus providing evidence for the construct validity of the two-item combined scale. taken together, the findings provide support for using this reduced scale in studies where the full eds scale is not available.  keywords discrimination; construct validation; add health; everyday discrimination scale; nsal; nlaas  author manuscript  discrimination, or “differential treatment of members of groups by both individuals and social institutions” (williams and mohammed 2009: 21), has received increased empirical attention in the past few decades. although most commonly considered in relation to race/ethnicity, discrimination can be perpetrated due to a variety of demographic or identity markers held by an individual. regardless of the characteristics driving the discriminatory treatment, numerous reviews and meta-analyses have documented discrimination’s pernicious effects on the mental health of individuals in the u.s. and internationally (williams, neighbors, and jackson 2003; pascoe and smart richman 2009; schmitt et al. 2014; benner et al. 2018). mental health challenges, in turn, have been linked  corresponding author: aprile d. benner, department of human development and family sciences, university of texas at austin, 1 university station a2702, austin, tx, usa. abenner@prc.utexas.edu. data and syntax related to cleaning and analyses can be found at https://osf.io/se9gt/. note that while syntax for data cleaning and analyses for add health are included, the add health data are not available through this link as the project used restricted use data.  
  benner et al.  page 2  author manuscript  with physiologic responses (steptoe et al. 2004; rubin, coplan, and bowker 2009) and physical health and health behaviors (olson, hummer, and harris 2017; ransome et al. 2017), highlighting the important role that mental health may play for physical health and biological embedding of the discrimination stress response in the long term.  author manuscript  estimates of the commonality of discrimination in the u.s. vary depending on how and for whom discrimination is measured. for example, using single-item discrimination measures, prevalence rates from large, national samples document rates from 25% to 43% overall, with conflicting data regarding whether rates are relatively consistent across racial/ethnic groups (boutwell et al. 2017) or whether prevalence rates vary considerably based on the racial/ethnic group under consideration and the method for calculating discrimination (i.e., continuous versus dichotomous indicator; lee et al. 2019). smaller community-based samples using more in-depth measures of discrimination tend to provide even higher estimates (kulis, marsiglia, and nieri 2009; grollman 2012).  author manuscript  as such, it is difficult to accurately ascertain the prevalence rates of discrimination in the u.s. population. unfortunately, many ongoing, population-based surveys, such as the national health interview survey and the american housing survey, do not currently include measures of discrimination, yet integration of such a measure would provide critical insights into actual prevalence rates as well as documentation of the risks of discrimination for population health and well-being. indeed, this motivation, in part, drove several prior large-scale national studies to include discrimination measures (e.g., midlife in the united states [midus] study, coronary artery risk in young adults [cardia] study, health and retirement study [hrs], national longitudinal study of youth [nlsy79-ya]), and the general social survey, an ongoing study of public opinion that has been ongoing since 1972, although silent on personally-experienced discrimination, taps into related constructs of race relations and racial attitudes linked to structural racism. building on this base, and given the current sociopolitical climate in the u.s., there is a clear need for the inclusion of discrimination measures in large-scale longitudinal population-based studies. this, however, is made more difficult by the fact that nationally-representative studies can be resistant to including extensive items assessing any given construct, which is typically ideal for measuring complex phenomena (schaeffer and presser 2003). as such, construct validation of a shortened measure of discrimination—the central goal of the current study—may serve as a critical first step toward documenting the extent of discrimination experienced by the u.s. population. measurement work is also critical to validate the use of the single discrimination item current included in the national longitudinal study of adolescent to adult health (add health) study.  author manuscript  measuring discrimination numerous measures exist to assess discrimination in adult and child populations. a recent review of measurement of racism and race/ethnic discrimination identified 46 unique instruments (atkins 2014). one of the most common measures used to assess chronic, day-to-day discrimination is the everyday discrimination scale (eds; williams et al. 1997). this nine-item scale, originally developed based on qualitative research with african american adults, assesses the frequency of specific discriminatory events in individuals’  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 3  author manuscript  daily lives, including disrespectful or discourteous treatment, poor service at restaurants or shops, being insulted or harassed, and assumptions about one’s intelligence or honesty (see appendix a for all items in the nine-item eds). although initially focused on discrimination due to race/ethnicity, the eds was later expanded such that individuals endorsing any of the experiences queried are generally asked the attribution for the mistreatment across multiple potential identities vulnerable to stigmatization, including race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, social class, sexual orientation, and mental or physical disability among others (kessler, mickelson, and williams 1999).  author manuscript  several studies have assessed the psychometric qualities of the eds. initial work by kessler, mickelson, and williams (1999) employed exploratory factor analysis to determine the factor structure of the eds with national population study data from midus, documenting a single factor solution fit the data best. subsequent studies using both national samples (i.e., collaborative psychiatric epidemiology studies and the study of women’s health across the nation; kim, sellbom, and ford 2014 and lewis et al. 2012, respectively) and smaller community samples (i.e., clark, coleman, and novak 2004, focused on black adolescents) have similarly identified a single-factor solution, with some evidence that the first two items in the scale (“treated with less courtesy” and “treated with less respect”) seem to display particularly strong factor loadings. the two national studies also suggested, with minor exceptions, that the eds functioned similarly across racial/ethnic groups.  author manuscript  other psychometric work, in contrast, suggests either a two-factor solution for the eds (i.e., barnes et al. 2004) using data from the chicago health and aging project (with a sample of older black and white residents of chicago) or a more limited five-item scale with better psychometric properties (across chinese and vietnamese individuals from the national latino and asian american study; chan et al. 2012). for both of these studies, scale reliability and dimensionality were driven predominantly by the first two items in the scale (“treated with less courtesy” and “treated with less respect”).  author manuscript  although the full eds has been used extensively in community-based samples, a multitude of studies have used more abbreviated scales from the eds to assess discrimination (e.g., the chicago community adult health study, the health and retirement study; sternthal et al. 2011 and luo et al. 2012, respectively). notably, in add health (harris et al. 2019), study participants responded to the following item, which combines the first two questions from the eds scale: “in your day-to-day life, how often do you feel you have been treated with less respect or courtesy than other people?” (termed the “two-item combined scale” in the current study). likely due to the recency of the item’s addition to the add health survey (i.e., wave iv, which occurred in 2007–2008) and the fact that it is a single item, published work has rarely used this measure. as exceptions, everett and colleagues (2016) examined the relation between a dichotomously-scaled version of the discrimination item with individuals’ psychological well-being (i.e., perceived stress, depression, anxiety), and wood and cook (2019) used an identical strategy for dichotomizing discrimination to determine whether the link between discrimination and an inflammatory marker, c-reactive protein, was moderated by familial support. the single-item discrimination measure in add health has also been included as a covariate in other research examining the links between skin color and cardiovascular and metabolic health, with the authors noting that “add health  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 4  author manuscript  does not include a multi-item discrimination scale... thus, we may not fully capture the prevalence of discrimination experiences in our sample” (wassink, perreira, and harris 2017: 1,021). other research has identified substantial redundancies across the first two eds items (stucky et al. 2011), but whether or not a single item such as the one used in add health displays construct validity compared to a more extensive discrimination scale is unknown and is a central focus of the current study.  current study  author manuscript author manuscript  the current study drew on three national datasets: the national survey of american life (nsal), the national latino and asian american study (nlaas), and add health to examine the construct validity of the combined two-item discrimination measure in add health as compared to the full nine-item eds and the two-item scale that comprised the first two items of eds scale from nsal and nlaas. the nsal predominantly included african american and afro-caribbean adults, whereas the nlaas’s focal sample were latino and asian american adults. nsal and nlaas are ideal for examining the construct validity of the eds, as they are nationally representative and include the full nine-item eds scale as well as a multitude of identical or near-identical outcome measures. moreover, when combined, they include a racially/ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of u.s. adults. as noted previously, add health, which is an ongoing population-based study, uses a combined two-item scale comprised of the first two items of the eds, and it also includes a set of outcome measures that are generally parallel to nsal and nlaas. as such, we are able to compare the psychometric properties of the combined two-item eds measure in add health with both a comparable composite measure of the first two eds items and the full eds measure from nsal and nlaas. following recommendations of flake and colleagues (2017), we evaluate the descriptive statistics for the eds scales along with several aspects of construct validity (e.g., item-total correlations, convergent validity, criterion validity).  author manuscript  the current study tests the psychometric properties specifically in young adulthood given the age range of add health respondents; as such, only a subset of the nsal and nlaas sample is included. young adulthood is a critical stage of the life course as individuals are solidifying identities and their expectations for how society views and treats them (hope, hoggard, and thomas 2015) and also experiencing major transitions in adult roles and responsibilities (e.g., full-time employment, cohabitation, parenthood), all of which can contribute to biological embedding (halfon and hochstein 2002) and potentially serve as turning points for individuals’ mental health and psychopathology (schulenberg, sameroff, and cicchetti 2004). moreover, peaks in mental health challenges emerge at this stage of the life course (kessler et al. 2005). initial evidence also suggests that discrimination may have more pernicious effects on mental health in young adulthood compared to other times in the life course (e.g., age 55 or older; wheaton et al. 2017), and theories of stress proliferation posit that experiences of stressors such as discrimination are often initiated in the early life course and persistent through old age, such that what happens in young adulthood matters greatly to larger health disparities consistently observed in later life (pearlin et al. 2005). therefore, the current study focuses on discrimination among young adults and its relation to mental health. sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 5  author manuscript  data and methods participants  author manuscript  the nsal was conducted in the u.s. from 2001–2003 to investigate racial and ethnic differences in mental disorders and psychological distress. the study’s multi-stage sample design combined a central probability sample with a supplemental sample of households in areas with higher residential concentration of afro-caribbeans. participants aged 18 and older were interviewed primarily using laptop computer-assisted personal interview methods in respondents’ homes. the final sample for nsal consisted of 6,082 participants (59% african american, 27% afro-caribbean, and 14% white; 62% female; african american and afro-caribbean young adults were combined into one racial category for analysis.). the mean household income was 35,832 (household income top-coded at 200,000). almost one-quarter of the sample (23%) completed less than 12 years of schooling, whereas 42% reported 13 or more years of education.  author manuscript  the nlaas was conducted from 2001–2003 and was designed to estimate the prevalence of mental disorders and rates of mental health service utilization by latino and asian american adults aged 18 and older. nlaas combines a central sample that was designed to be nationally representative of all u.s. populations with supplemental samples that targeted areas with greater than 5% residential density of the asian and latin american origin groups of interest. participants completed the survey using laptop computer-assisted personal interview methods, with interviews primarily conducted in respondents’ homes. respondents included 4,649 adults (53% latino, 43% asian american, 4% white nonhispanic, non-asian; 54% female). half of the nlaas sample reported 13 years or more of education, whereas 28% indicated 11 years or fewer of education. the mean household income for the sample was 57,592 (household income top-coded at 200,000).  author manuscript  finally, the national longitudinal study of adolescent to adult health (add health) is an on-going longitudinal study that originally surveyed 7th to 12th grade adolescents in the 1994–1995 school year. the sample was identified using a multistage, stratified, schoolbased, cluster sampling design, with high schools selected based on their region, urbanicity, school type (public vs. private), racial composition, and size (harris et al. 2019). in total, 90,118 students completed in-school surveys, and of those students, 20,745 participated in the wave i in-home interviews. subsequent interviews were conducted in 1995–1996 (wave ii, n 14,738) and again in 2001–2002 (wave iii; n 15,197). wave iv (the focal wave for the current study) included 15,644 respondents aged 24–32 who were interviewed in 2007–2008. due to the small percentages of biracial, native americans and other racial groups, we restricted our study sample to only black (22%), latino (17%), asian americans (6%), and white (56%) with a sample size of 14,839. the mean household income for the add health sample at wave iv was between 40,000 and 49,999 (income top-coded at 150,000). over one-third of the wave iv participants (44%) completed some college education, with 8% reporting less than a high school degree. due to add health’s restricted respondent age range, for the current study, we utilized samples from the nsal and nlaas that were restricted to respondents aged 24–32 to be comparable with add health. after the age restriction, our analytic sample for nsal  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 6  author manuscript  consisted of 1,111 participants (89% black, 11% white; 66% female), and the nlaas analytic sample consisted of 1,055 participants (56% latino, 44% asian american; 53% female).  author manuscript  in addition to the primary analyses conducted with the age-restricted samples, we also conducted supplemental analyses utilizing a racial discrimination subsample in which the analytic samples for each dataset were limited to only those who reported racial/ethnic discrimination. these analyses were conducted given that the eds was originally designed to assess race/ethnicity-based discrimination (williams et al. 1997). moreover, across the three datasets, the highest frequency of respondents attributed their discrimination experiences to their race, ancestry, national origin, ethnicity, or skin color. in total, the nsal racial discrimination subsample consisted of 623 participants (99% black, 1% white; 63% female); however, due to the small number of white participants in this racial discrimination subsample (n 10), we excluded these participants, bringing our final nsal racial discrimination subsample to 615 black participants (64% female). the nlaas racial discrimination subsample consisted of 413 participants (54% latino, 46% asian american; 48% female), and the add health racial discrimination subsample consisted of 447 participants (56% black, 24% latino, 13% white, 7% asian american; 46% female). participant demographics from each survey for the primary study sample are presented in table 1. participant characteristics for the supplemental racial discrimination study sample are presented in appendix b1. measures  author manuscript  in general, items drawn from nsal and nlaas were identical with the few exceptions noted; parallel well-being measures were drawn from add health, although, in some cases, the phrasing of the item(s) or the rating scale differed slightly. for more details on items used for analyses, see appendix a.  author manuscript  perceived discrimination.—in the nsal and nlaas datasets, perceived discrimination was measured using the full everyday discrimination scale (williams et al. 1997), a nine-item measure in which respondents were asked to report how often they experienced discrimination in their everyday lives (e.g., “you receive poorer service than other people at restaurants or stores”). participants rated each item on a scale from “almost every day” (1) to “never” (6). if the participant rated any of the nine items as “less than once a year” (5) or more frequently, the participant was then asked to report the reason they believe they were discriminated against (e.g., attribution tied to race, gender, weight, etc.). all nine items were reverse coded such that higher scores indicated more frequent discrimination experiences. we calculated the mean for the full nine-item eds scale, and these mean composites exhibited strong reliability (α .87 for the nsal primary study sample; α .90 for the nlaas primary study sample). likewise, the mean of the first two items of the eds scale were calculated to create a composite score (“you are treated with less courtesy than other people are,” “you are treated with less respect than other people are”), and the correlations for the two items were high (r .72 for the nsal primary study sample, r .79 for the nlaas primary study sample). higher mean scores on the 9-item and 2-item composites indicated greater perceived discrimination.  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 7  author manuscript  in the add health dataset, a single-item measure was used to assess perceived discrimination, which is labeled as the 2-item combined scale in the current study. this item combines the first two items of the eds scale (“in your day-to-day life, how often do you feel you have been treated with less respect or courtesy than other people?”). participants provided ratings ranging from “never” (0) to “often” (3). only those participants who reported experiencing discrimination “sometimes” (2) or “often” (3) were asked their attributions for the discrimination. psychological well-being.—we included seven different aspects of psychological wellbeing as outcomes for the convergent validity analyses.  author manuscript  anxiety.—for nsal and nlaas, anxiety was measured using a single item with a scale ranging from “often” (1) to “never” (4). the item was reverse coded such that a higher score indicated greater anxiety. for add health, anxiety was measured by four items. participants rated each on a scale of “strongly agree” (1) to “strongly disagree” (5). all items except for one (“i get stressed out easily”) were reverse coded. a mean score of the four items was calculated (α .69), with higher scores indicating greater anxiety. worry.—for nsal and nlaas, worry was measured by a single item for which participants answered either “no” (0) or “yes” (1). add health also measured worry with a single item, with participants rating how true the statement was about them on a scale ranging from “strongly agree” (1) to “strongly disagree” (5); the item was reverse coded such that a higher score indicated greater worry.  author manuscript  social withdrawal.—for nsal and nlaas, social withdrawal was measured using two “no” (0) or “yes” (1) items. the proportion of social withdrawal indicators experienced for each participant was calculated. for add health, social withdrawal was measured by calculating the mean of five items, which were rated using a scale from “strongly agree” (1) to “strongly disagree” (5). all items except for one (“i talk to a lot of different people at parties”) were reverse coded such that higher scores denoted greater social withdrawal (α .69). depression.—for all three surveys, depression was measured by a single item for which the participant reported how often they felt depressed during the past week. the reporting scale ranged from “rarely or none of the time” (0) to “most or all of the time” (3) for nsal and add health and from “all of the time” (1) to “none of the time” (5) for nlaas. the nlaas item was reverse coded such that a higher score indicated greater depression.  author manuscript  happiness.—only nsal and add health included a measure of happiness, which was comprised of one item in which the participant reported how often they felt happy during the past week. the scale ranged from “rarely or none of the time” (0) to “most or all of the time” (3) in both surveys. hostility.—for nsal and nlaas, hostility was measured using three items. participants answered either “no” (0) or “yes” (1) to each, and the proportion of hostility experiences indicated by each participant was calculated. for add health, hostility was measured by  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 8  author manuscript  three items rated on a scale of “strongly agree” (1) to “strongly disagree” (5). items were reverse coded such that higher mean scores indicated greater hostility (α .85). irritability.—irritability was measured in nsal and nlaas using two items. participants answered “no” (0) or “yes” (1) whether they experienced each, and the proportion of events experienced for each participant was calculated. for add health, irritability was measured by a single item with a rating scale ranging from “strongly agree” (1) to “strongly disagree” (5). this item was reverse coded such that higher scores indicate greater irritability. analysis plan  author manuscript  in examining the construct validity of the 2-item discrimination measure as compared to the full nine-item scale, the current study followed closely the steps outlined in the influential qualitative review paper on construct validation in social science research (flake, pek, and hehman 2017). first, we conducted descriptive analyses for the 9-item, 2-item, and 2-item combined eds scales across the three datasets. next, item analyses were conducted by examining the item-total correlations of the 9-item and 2-item eds scales. to establish convergent validity, we examined the correlations between the 9-item and 2-item scales (as well as between the 7-item scale, which removes the cross-over items, and the 2-item scale) and how these varied across race/ethnicity and gender. known group (i.e., gender, race/ethnicity) differences were also tested with the 9-item and 2-item eds scales. lastly, to establish criterion validity, we examined the correlation between the 9-item and 2-item scales with key measures of mental health for the full samples as well as across the known groups of race/ethnicity and gender. construct validation analyses were conducted with the primary study sample and with the racial discrimination subsample. respondent sampling probability weights were included in all of the analyses in order to account for the multistage sampling methods used in each study. all analyses were conducted in stata 16.0 (statacorp 2019).  author manuscript  results descriptive statistics for the eds measure  author manuscript  for the primary study sample, the 9-item eds scale in nsal had a mean of 2.31 (sd 0.86) and a median of 2.22, with scores ranging from 1 to 6. for the 2-item eds scale in nsal, the mean (2.55, sd 1.18), median (2.50), and range (1–6) were similar to those of the 9-item scale. in the nlaas primary study sample, the 9-item eds scale had a mean of 1.91 (sd 0.82) and a median of 1.89, with scores ranging from 1 to 6. the 2-item eds scale in nlaas had a mean of 2.29 (sd 1.24) and a median of 2.00, with scores ranging from 1 to 6. in the add health primary study sample, the 2-item combined scale had a mean of 0.99 (sd 0.83) and a median of 1.00, with scores ranging from 0 to 3. the 9-item, 2-item, and 2-item combined scales for each dataset were normally distributed within the primary study samples. the racial discrimination subsample reported slightly more frequent discrimination than the primary study sample across the three datasets and the three eds scales (9-item, 2-item, and 2-item combined discrimination scales (see appendix b2)); this was to be expected because attributions were only queried when respondents reported experiencing discrimination.  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 9  item-total correlations of the eds scales  author manuscript  for the primary study sample, the 9-item eds scale had item-total correlations ranging from r .59 to .79 in nsal and r .60 to .81 in nlaas. the correlation between the items comprising the 2-item eds measure within the study sample was r .73 in nsal and r .80 in nlaas. add health only had one item (i.e., 2-item combined scale), and thus item-total correlations were not available. identical analyses were conducted with the racial discrimination subsample in both the nsal and nlaas datasets and showed similar results. specifically, item-total correlations ranged from .54 to .74 across nsal and nlaas, and the correlation between the items comprising the 2-item eds measure was r .65 in nsal and r .74 in nlaas. together, this information suggests that the individual items were strongly related to the composite indicators in the study samples for young adults.  author manuscript  convergent validity  author manuscript  to assess convergent validity of the 2-item scale, we examined the correlation between the 9-item and 2-item scales within each dataset. this value was r .82 in nsal and r .83 in nlaas. the correlations between the 9-item and 2-item scales were similar for men (r  .80 and r .82 for nsal and nlaas, respectively) and women (r .83 and r .84 for nsal and nlaas, respectively) and for black (r .81 in nsal), asian american (r  .87 in nlaas), latino (r .82 in nlaas), and white (r .83 in nsal), participants. when the first two items of the nine-item scale were excluded from the composite to address potential convergent validity inflation, the correlation between the 2-item and resulting 7-item scale was r .66 in both nsal and nlaas. the within-group values across gender and race/ethnicity were similar when considering the correlations between the 2-item and 7-item scales (rrange .63 – .74). identical analyses were conducted within the racial discrimination subsample in both the nsal and nlaas datasets, and these analyses yielded similar results (r’s ranging from .41 to .77). these findings suggest that the 9-item and 2-item scales display high levels of convergent validity across datasets for the young adult populations. known group comparisons on the 2-item and 9-item eds scales  author manuscript  we next examined mean-level differences in the scales (9-item, 2-item, 2-item combined) across key demographic indicators (i.e., gender and race/ethnicity). consistent with previous research, the independent samples t-test results with the primary study sample (ages 24–32) suggested that women reported lower levels of discrimination than did men on the 9-item scale in nsal (t (1,104) 2.18, p .05, 95% ci [ .42, .02]) and for the 9-item scale in nlaas (t (1,054) 2.80, p .01, 95% ci [ 0.31, 0.06]). the gender difference was marginally significant for the 2-item scale in nlaas (t (1,053) 1.93, p .05, 95% ci [ 0.39, 0.00]) but non-significant for the 2-item scale in nsal (t (1,103) 1.60, p .11, 95% ci [ 0.54, 0.06]). we observed similar results with the racial discrimination subsample, such that women reported significantly lower levels of racial discrimination than did men for the 9-item scale in nsal (t (614) 3.27, p .001, 95% ci [ .52, .13]) and for both the 9-item (t (412) 3.64, p .001, 95% ci [ .47, .14]) and 2-item scales in nlaas (t (412)  2.16, p .05, 95% ci [ .60, .03]). no gender differences emerged for the nsal 2-item  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 10  author manuscript  scale for the racial discrimination subsample (t (614) 1.27, p .20, 95% ci [ .44, .09]). in addition, no gender differences were observed in add health for the 2-item combined scale with either the primary study sample (t (13,993) .96, p .34, 95% ci [ .06, .02]) or the racial discrimination subsample (t (424) 1.87, p .06, 95% ci [ .20, .001]).  author manuscript  to examine racial/ethnic differences for the 9-item and 2-item scales in nsal and nlaas, we pooled the two datasets. analyses with the primary study sample (ages 24–32) in the pooled dataset showed that there were significant race/ethnic differences for the 9-item (f (3, 2,157) 35.75, p .001) and 2-item scales (f (3, 2,155) 11.39, p .001) in the pooled nsal/nlaas data and for the 2-item combined scale in add health (f (3, 13,991) 8.15, p .001). specifically, the posthoc analyses showed that black respondents reported significantly higher levels of discrimination than latino, asian american, and white participants across the 9-item and 2-item scale in the pooled nsal/nlaas dataset and that black respondents reported significantly higher levels of discrimination than asian american and white participants in the 2-item combined scale in add health. in addition, white participants reported higher levels of discrimination than latino participants on the 9-item scale in the pooled nsal/nlaas dataset, and for the 2-item combined scale in add health, white and latino respondents reported higher levels of discrimination than the asian american participants. compared with the results of the primary study sample, results with the racial discrimination subsamples from nsal and nlaas suggested a similar pattern of racial/ethnic differences for the 9-item and 2-item eds scales, and no race/ethnic differences were observed in the 2-item combined eds scale for the racial discrimination subsample in add health (see appendix b3). criterion validity of the 9-item, 2-item, and 2-item combined eds scales  author manuscript author manuscript  for criterion validity, we examined the links between the three eds scales and a number of indicators of psychological well-being. table 2 presents correlations of each of the three eds scales with the seven unique indicators of psychological well-being across each of the three datasets. for the primary study sample, the three eds scales (i.e., 9-item, 2-item, and 2-item combined) showed generally similar patterns of correlations with the psychological well-being indicators in nsal, nlaas, and add health. individuals reporting higher levels of discrimination tended to have higher levels of worry, social withdrawal, depression, hostility, and irritability as well as lower levels of happiness. the only exception was that the 9-item and 2-item scales in both nsal and nlaas had weak and generally non-significant correlations with anxiety (rs ranging from .05 to .12), while this correlation was somewhat higher for the 2-item combined scale in add health (r .21, p .01). compared with the primary study sample, the three eds scales in the racial discrimination subsample showed generally similar patterns of correlations with most of the psychological well-being indicators across the three datasets (see appendix b4). overall, these findings provide strong evidence of criterion validity for the 2-item combined scale. sensitivity analyses as the discrimination measures were gathered in different periods across the three datasets (2001–2003 for nsal and nlaas; 2007–2008 for add health), sensitivity analyses were conducted to examine potential cohort effects. specifically, we selected the age range in  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 11  author manuscript author manuscript  nsal (n 301) and nlaas (n 311) that corresponded with the age range of the add health cohort in the years 2001–2003 (ages 18–26), and we then conducted our full set of construct validation analyses. descriptive statistics for the eds measures in the sensitivity analyses sample were generally similar to the primary study sample except that the 2-item and 9-item eds scales in the sensitivity analyses sample had higher kurtosis scores (table b5). divergence was also observed in the results for the item-total correlations. specifically, in the sensitivity analyses sample, the 9-item eds scale had item-total correlations ranging from r .17 to r .83 in nsal and r .27 to r .80 in nlaas, which are lower than those in the study sample (r .59 to .81) and driven primarily by low correlations between the less respect and courtesy items with threatened/harassed, which were particularly low in nsal. for the convergent validity, similar results were found across the sensitivity analyses sample and the primary study sample, suggesting strong correlations between the 9-item and 2-item eds scales (table b6). for the known group comparisons (table b7), gender differences were consistently found in 9-item scale in nsal and nlaas as well as the 2-item scale in nsal in the sensitivity analyses sample; however, race differences were only observed with the 9-item scale in the sensitivity analyses sample. for criterion validity, similar results were observed in the sensitivity analyses subsample as compared to the primary study sample, such that the eds 9-item and 2-item scales correlated with most of the psychological well-being indicators across nsal and nlaas (table b8).  discussion  author manuscript  the central goal of the current study was to investigate the construct validity of a combined two-item discrimination measure that drew items from the eds as compared to the full nine-item eds and the two-item scale that comprised the first two items of eds scale. overall, we observed strong evidence for the construct validity of the two-item combined measure used in add health, suggesting that this scale, although limited in scope, is a meaningful measure of discrimination in young adult populations.  author manuscript  in establishing the construct validity of the two-item combined eds measure, we observed that correlations between the two items comprising the two-item combined measure (i.e., “treated with less courtesy” and “treated with less respect”) were strong, on par with the high end of the range of item-total correlations for the nine-item measure. moreover, within nsal and nlaas, correlations between the two-item and nine-item eds measures (as well as a 7-item measure that excluded the first two items) were high for the primary analytic sample (both for the full sample and across gender and racial/ethnic groups) and for the racial discrimination subsample. taken together, the findings from the item analysis and tests of convergent validity provide evidence for the construct validity of the two-item combined measure and are consistent with prior psychometric work on the nine-item eds and more limited scales, which show the scales to be strongly driven by the first two eds items (kim et al. 2014). strong evidence for criterion validity related to the correlations between the discrimination measure and the indicators of psychological well-being also emerged. overall, we observed that the nine-item, two-item, and two-item combined measures typically displayed significant correlations of similar magnitude in the primary analytic sample and the  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 12  author manuscript  discrimination subsample across mental health domains. this is of particular note given that the racial discrimination subsamples were smaller in size, generally between 400 to 600 young adults, and thus less likely to reflect underpowered analyses. the results from the tests of criterion validity also are consistent with the broader literature base that has consistently documented the pernicious links between discrimination and mental health across the life course (pascoe and smart richman 2009; benner et al. 2018).  author manuscript  this study represents the first efforts to validate the single-item discrimination measure used in add health with two other large, national datasets (nsal, nlaas), and the construct validation analyses suggest that the item can be used in future studies. although this contribution is critical, the study does have limitations that must be noted. first, the discrimination measures were rated on different likert scales, and the attribution questions were triggered by different ratings on these scales. nsal and nlaas used a 6-point scale consistent with the original eds scale (with attributions triggered when discrimination was ever reported). in contrast, add health used a condensed 4-point likert scale, and attribution items were triggered only when respondents reported experiencing discrimination sometimes or often. despite these discrepancies, we continued to observe greater similarity than differences across the scales; however, we would recommend that future studies integrating a 2-item combined discrimination measure (parallel to add health) use the scale and attribution rules in the larger eds.  author manuscript  second, for the criterion validity analyses, the psychological well-being outcomes considered were not always measured in the same way across the three datasets. although we were careful to select constructs that were meaningfully assessed in the datasets, differences in items and scales (i.e., dichotomous, likert) must be acknowledged. likewise, invariance testing of the psychological measures with multiple items (e.g., depression, anxiety in add health) has rarely been examined by race/ethnicity within the targeted datasets, which could influence the extent to which these psychological scales were interpreted and scored similarly across racial/ethnic groups. moreover, variation in known differences emerged for gender across the 9-item and 2-item scales, such that women reported lower discrimination for men for the 9-item scale, but this was not observed for the 2-item scale in nsal and the two-item combined scale in add health. this is not altogether surprising, as recent irt work on the eds scale has shown gender differences in irt parameters for the smart, dishonest, better, and insult items in the eds but not for the respect eds item, which is one of the two used in our 2-item combined scale (stucky et al. 2011).  author manuscript  additionally, we were only able to test the two-item combined scale in add health with a limited range of young adults (ages 24–32), thus limiting the generalizability of our findings to some extent. given that processes of biological embedding tied to discrimination and other stress processes often have their etiology early in the life course (pearlin et al. 2005), measurement of discrimination may be particularly critical during young adulthood. there is also evidence that the two-item scale operates similarly to the nine-item scale with the more extended age ranges captured in the full samples of nsal and nlaas (results available upon request to the first author). finally, it should also be noted that while the data for the current study are drawn from three national datasets, these were administered  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 13  author manuscript  at different times—nsal and nlaas were administered from 2001–2003, whereas add health was administered in 2007–2008. our sensitivity analyses examining cohort effects suggested many more similarities than differences, but historical events in the u.s. and other related period differences may have played a role in some of the inconsistencies we observed between nsal/nlaas and add health.  author manuscript  population studies have systematically documented inequalities in health across the life course (hayward and heron 1999; ross, masters, and hummer 2012), yet to gain more comprehensive insights into the health and well-being of individuals, the lens must be adjusted to systematically assess participants’ experiences of discriminatory treatment, as discrimination is a known stressor that affects functioning across domains (quillian 2006; lewis, cogburn, and williams 2015; goosby, cheadle, and mitchell 2018). ideally, measures of discrimination integrated into population studies should be comprehensive, assessing both the daily discriminatory stressors encountered by individuals in their everyday lives as well as chronic mistreatment tied to various socially-constructed identities that accumulates over the life course (williams and mohammed 2009). however, when population-based longitudinal surveys do not integrate these preferred comprehensive measures (such as with the add health study), the findings reported here suggest that the 2-item (or 2-item combined) discrimination scale drawn from the eds exhibits construct validity and is thus valid for inclusion and analysis in large-scale studies. such work is critical to expand current knowledge of the links between discrimination and population health that is, to date, based almost exclusively on community-based samples or crosssectional population samples.  funding author manuscript  this work was supported by nih grant k01hd087479 and a grant from the spencer foundation to the first author and nih grant p2chd042849 to the population research center. opinions reflect those of the authors and not necessarily those of the granting agencies.  appendix a.: detailed study measures and items measures discrimination  nsal items 1. you are treated with less courtesy than other people  scale 1-6  nlaas items 1. you are treated with less courtesy than other people  author manuscript  2. you are treated with less respect than other people.  2. you are treated with less respect than other people.  3. you receive poorer service than other people at restaurants or stores.  3. you receive poorer service than other people at restaurants or stores.  4. people act as if they think you are not smart.  4. people act as if they think you are not smart.  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  scale 1-6  add health items 1. in your day-today life, how often do you feel you have been treated with less respect or courtesy than other people?  scale 0-3  
  benner et al.  page 14  author manuscript  measures  nsal items  scale  nlaas items  5. people act as if they are afraid of you.  5. people act as if they are afraid of you.  6. people act as if they think you are dishonest.  6. people act as if they think you are dishonest.  7. people act as if they’re better than you are.  7. people act as if they’re better than you are.  8. you are called names or insulted.  8. you are called names or insulted.  9. you are threatened or harassed.  9. you are threatened or harassed.  scale  add health items  scale  anxiety  author manuscript  1. how often did you find it difficult to control your (worry or anxiety/ nerves or anxiety/anxiety or worry)?  1-4  1. how often did you find it difficult to control your (worry or anxiety/nerves or anxiety/anxiety or worry)?  1-4  1. i am relaxed most of the time.  1-5  2. i am not easily bothered by things.  1-5  3. i get stressed out easily.  1-5  4. i don’t worry about things that have already happened.  1-5  worry  author manuscript author manuscript  1. did you ever have a time in your life when you were a “worrier” that is, when you worried a lot more about things than other people with the same problems as you?  0-1  1. did you ever have a time in your life when you were a “worrier” – that is, when you worried a lot more about things than other people with the same problems as you?  0-1  1. i worry about things.  1-5  1. was there ever a time in your life when you felt very afraid or really, really shy with people, like meeting new people, going to parties, going on a date, or using a public bathroom?  0-1  1. was there ever a time in your life when you felt very afraid or really, really shy with people, like meeting new people, going to parties, going on a date, or using a public bathroom?  0-1  1. i don’t talk a lot.  1-5  2. was there ever a time in your life when you became very upset or nervous whenever you were in a social situation?  0-1  2. was there ever a time in your life when you became very upset or nervous whenever you were in a social situation?  0-1  2. i am not interested in other people’s problems.  1-5  3. i talk to a lot of different people at parties.  1-5  4. i keep in the background.  1-5  social withdrawal  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 15  author manuscript  measures  nsal items  scale  nlaas items  scale  add health items  scale  5. i am not really interested in others.  1-5  1. how often during the past week have you felt depressed?  0-3  1. how often during the past week have you felt happy?  0-3  depression 1. how often during the past week have you felt depressed?  0-3  1. during the last 30 days, about how often did you feel depressed?  1-5  1. how often during the past week have you felt happy?  0-3  n/a  1. have you ever in your life had attacks of anger when all of a sudden you lost control and broke or smashed something worth more than a few dollars?  0-1  1. have you ever in your life had attacks of anger when all of a sudden you lost control and broke or smashed something worth more than a few dollars?  0-1  1. i get angry easily.  1-5  2. have you ever had attacks of anger when all of a sudden you lost control and hit or tried to hurt someone?  0-1  2. have you ever had attacks of anger when all of a sudden you lost control and hit or tried to hurt someone?  0-1  2. i get upset easily.  1-5  3. have you ever had attacks of anger when all of a sudden you lost control and threatened to hit or hurt someone?  0-1  3. have you ever had attacks of anger when all of a sudden you lost control and threatened to hit or hurt someone?  0-1  3. i lose my temper.  1-5  1. have you ever had a period of time lasting several days or longer when most of the time you were very irritable, grumpy, or in a bad mood?  0-1  1. have you ever had a period of time lasting several days or longer when most of the time you were very irritable, grumpy, or in a bad mood?  0-1  1. i rarely get irritated.  1-5  2. have you ever had a period of time lasting several days or longer when most of the time you were so irritable that you either started arguments, shouted at people, or hit people?  0-1  2. have you ever had a period of time lasting several days or longer when most of the time you were so irritable that you either started arguments, shouted at people, or hit people?  0-1  happiness  author manuscript  hostility  author manuscript  irritability  author manuscript sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 16  author manuscript  appendix b.: supplemental analyzes table b1.  demographic characteristics of racial discrimination subsample in nsal, nlaas, and add health datasets. nsal  age  nlaas  n  m (sd)  615  28.35 (2.58)  %  n  m (sd)  413  28.33 (2.55)  add health %  n  m (sd)  447  29.10 (1.74)  %  race/ethnicity african american/black/afrocaribbean  615  100  252  56.38  author manuscript  latino  224  54.24  106  23.71  asian american  189  45.76  30  6.71  59  13.20  white gender female  392  63.74  200  48.43  206  46.09  male  223  36.26  213  51.57  241  53.91  employed  492  80.00  298  72.15  292  79.78  unemployed  75  12.20  33  7.99  34  9.29  out of the workforce  48  7.80  82  19.85  40  10.93  less than 12 years  88  14.31  73  17.68  52  11.63  12 years  197  32.03  86  20.82  69  15.44  13–15 years  194  31.54  95  23.00  210  46.98  16 or more years  136  22.11  159  38.50  116  employment status  education level  author manuscript  household income (in thousands)  615  25–30  413  30–40  412  25.95 30–40  note: total possible n for nsal is 615, for nlaas is 413, and for add health is 447.  table b2.  descriptive statistics for the eds measure in the racial discrimination subsample. nsal  nlaas  add health  author manuscript  9-item  2-item  9-item  2-item  2-item combined  mean  2.71  2.98  2.16  2.68  2.16  sd  0.82  1.11  0.73  1.16  0.37  median  2.56  3.00  2.00  2.50  2.00  min  1.00  1.00  1.11  1.00  2.00  max  6.00  6.00  6.00  6.00  3.00  skewness  0.81  0.62  1.24  0.85  1.83  kurtosis  3.43  3.28  5.42  3.59  4.34  note: total possible n for nsal is 615, for nlaas is 413, and for add health is 447.  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 17  author manuscript  table b3.  mean level of discrimination by race in the pooled nsal/nlaas dataset and add health with racial discrimination subsample. african american m (sd)  latino m (sd)  asian american m (sd)  white m (sd)  f statistic  9-item scale  2.71 (0.82)a  2.17 (0.75)b  2.15 (0.66)b  -  f(2, 1,036) 36.17***  2-item scale  2.98 (1.11)a  2.72 (1.22)b  2.57 (0.95)b  -  f(2, 1, 026) 6.94***  2-item combined scale  2.15 (0.36)  2.11 (o.32)  2.07 (0.26)  2.26 (0.44)  f(3, 422) 1.32  author manuscript  note: means that do not share a subscript within a row are significantly different from one another at p .05. significant statistics are bolded. *** p .001.  table b4.  supplementary analysis: convergent validity of 9-item and 2-item eds scales with the racial discrimination subsample in nsal, nlaas, and add health. nsal (n 615)  nlaas (n 413)  add health (n  447)  9-item scale  2-item scale  9-item scale  2-item scale  2-item combined scale  anxiety  .05   .05  .03  .15  .08  worry  .21***  .13**  .15**  .15**  .06  social withdrawal  .19***  .08  .13**  .04  .11*  depression  .10*  .04  .25***  .14**  .18***  happiness   .12**  .02  --  --   .03  hostility  .21***  .07  .22***  .09  .07  irritability  .21***  .13**  .23***  .13**  .13**  psychological well-being  anxious behaviors  author manuscript  note:  *  p .05 ** p .01 *** p .001. two-tailed test.  table b5.  descriptive statistics for the eds measure in the sensitivity analyses subsample.  author manuscript  nsal (n 301)  nlaas (n 311)  9-item  2-item  9-item  2-item  mean  2.32  2.67  1.97  2.40  sd  0.93  1.29  0.85  1.33  median  2.33  2.50  2.00  2.00  min  1.00  1.00  1.00  1.00  max  6.00  6.00  6.00  6.00  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 18  author manuscript  nsal (n 301)  nlaas (n 311)  9-item  2-item  9-item  2-item  skewness  0.71  0.84  1.03  0.86  kurtosis  3.30  3.31  4.72  3.04  table b6.  correlations between the 9-item and 2-item scales by gender and race in the sensitivity analyses subsample. nsal (n 301)  nlaas (n 311)  0.78  0.80  men  0.69  0.81  women  0.85  0.79  white  0.76  -  african american  0.81  -  asian  -  0.91  latino  -  0.77  total sample  author manuscript  gender  race/ethnicity  table b7.  mean level of discrimination by race and gender in the nsal and nlaas datasets with the sensitivity analyses subsample.  author manuscript  african american m (sd)  latino m (sd)  asian american m (sd)  white m (sd)  f statistic m (sd)  merged nsal/nlaas sample 9-item scale  2.47 (0.06)a  1.87 (0.06)b  2.00 (0.08)b  2.20 (0.13)b  f(3, 608) 9.85***  2-item scale  2.70 (0.07)  2.27 (0.10)  2.35 (0.11)  2.58 (0.23)  f(3,606) 2.47  female  male  m (sd)  m (sd)  9-item scale  2.30 (0.06)a  2.69 (0.08)b  t(299) 4.39*, 95% ci [ .82, .03]  2-item scale  2.54 (0.08)a  2.94 (0.12)b  t(298) 4.74*, 95% ci [ 1.16, .06]  9-item scale  1.80 (0.06)a  2.07 (0.08)b  t(310) 5.24*, 95% ci [ .52, .04]  2-item scale  2.15 (0.09)  2.49 (0.12)  t(309) 2.51, 95% ci [ .70, .08]  nsal  nlaas  author manuscript  note: means that do not share a subscript within a row are significantly different from one another at p .05. significant statistics are bolded. * p .05. *** p .011.  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
  benner et al.  page 19  author manuscript  table b8.  supplementary analysis: convergent validity of 9-item and 2-item eds scales with the sensitivity analyses subsample in nlaas and nsal. nsal (n 301)  nlaas (n 311)  9-item scale  2-item scale  9-item scale  2-item scale  anxiety   .02   .05  .11  .20*  worry  .24***  .17**  .29***  .29***  social withdrawal  .16***  .09**  .16**  .13*  depression  .08**  .03  .21***  .15**  happiness   .10**   .05  --  --  hostility  .29***  .19***  .16**  .12*  irritability  .17***  .15***  .21***  .20***  psychological well-being  anxious behaviors  author manuscript  note:  *  p .05 ** p .01 *** p .001. two-tailed test.  references  author manuscript author manuscript  atkins rahshida. 2014. “instruments measuring perceived racism/racial discrimination: review and critique of factor analytic techniques.” international journal of health services 44:711–34. doi: 10.2190/hs.44.4.c [pubmed: 25626225] barnes lisa l., mendes de leon carlos f., wilson robert s., bienias julia l., bennett david a., and evans denis a.. 2004. “racial differences in perceived discrimination in a community population of older blacks and whites.” journal of aging and health 16:315–37. doi: 10.1177/0898264304264202 [pubmed: 15155065] benner aprile d., wang yijie, shen yishan, boyle alaina e., polk richelle, and cheng yen-pi. 2018. “racial/ethnic discrimination and well-being during adolescence: a meta-analytic review.” american psychologist 73:855–83. doi: 10.1037/amp0000204 [pubmed: 30024216] boutwell brian b., nedelec joseph l., winegard bo, shackelford todd, beaver kevin m., vaughn michael, barnes jc, and wright john p.. 2017. “the prevalence of discrimination across racial groups in contemporary america: results from a nationally representative sample of adults.” plos one 12: e0183356. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0183356 [pubmed: 28837680] chan keith tsz-kit, tran thanh v., and nguyen thuc-nhi. 2012. “cross-cultural equivalence of a measure of perceived discrimination between chinese-americans and vietnameseamericans.” journal of ethnic & cultural diversity in social work 21:20–36. doi: 10.1080/15313204.2011.647348 clark rodney, coleman apollonia p., and novak jeremy d.. 2004. “brief report: initial psychometric properties of the everyday discrimination scale in black adolescents.” journal of adolescence 27:363–68. doi: 10.1016/j.adolescence.2003.09.004 [pubmed: 15159094] everett bethany g., jarron saint onge, and stefanie mollborn. 2016. “effects of minority status and perceived discrimination on mental health.” population research and policy review 35:445–69. doi: 10.1007/s11113-016-9391-3 [pubmed: 30867619] flake jessica k., pek jolynn, and hehman eric. 2017. “construct validation in social and personality research: current practice and recommendations.” social psychological and personality science 8(4):370–78. doi: 10.1177/1948550617693063 sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
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  author manuscript 137 85  out of the workforce  321 240  13-15 years  16 or more years  sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29. 25–30  21.60  28.89  33.57  15.93  7.65  12.33  80.02  1,055  377  242  212  224  221  92  742  501  554  30–40  28.18 (2.55)  m (sd)  note: total possible n for nsal is 1,111, for nlaas is 1,055, and for add health is 14,839.  1,111  373  12 years  household income (in thousands)  177  less than 12 years  education level  889  34.11  379  unemployed  65.89  employed  employment status  male  female  gender 732  465  white  10.62  89.38  1,055  asian american 118  28.29 (2.54)  590  993  1,111  latino  african american/black/afro-caribbean  race/ethnicity  age  n  n m (sd)  nlaas %  author manuscript nsal  35.73  22.94  20.09  21.23  20.95  8.72  70.33  47.49  52.51  44.08  55.92  %  13,861  4,709  6,536  2,420  1,171  1,264  833  9,646  6,951  7,888  8,276  860  2,488  3,215  14,839  n  40–50  28.97 (1.74)  m (sd)  add health  author manuscript  demographic characteristics of the study samples.  31.74  44.06  16.31  7.89  10.76  7.09  82.14  46.84  53.16  55.77  5.8  16.77  21.67  %  author manuscript  table 1. benner et al. page 22  
  benner et al.  page 23  table 2.  author manuscript  convergent validity of 9-item and 2-item eds scales in nsal, nlaas, and add health for study sample. nsal  nlaas  add health  author manuscript  9-item scale  2-item scale  9-item scale  2-item scale  2-item combined scale  anxiety   .02   .05  .09  .12*  .21***  worry  .24***  .17***  .19***  .18***  .16***  social withdrawal  .16***  .09**  .17***  .15***  .12***  depression  .08**  .03  .17***  .12***  .24***  happiness   .10**   .05  --  --   .24***  hostility  .29***  .19***  .20***  .14***  .20***  irritability  .17***  .15***  .23***  .20***  .14***  psychological well-being  anxious behaviors  note: age range of the samples is 24–32 years. total possible n for nsal is 1,111, for nlaas is 1,055, and for add health is 14,839. *  p .05  ** p .01 *** p .001. two-tailed test.  author manuscript author manuscript sociol methods res. author manuscript; available in pmc 2024 may 29.  
       


