Black Youth Understanding of Racial Inequality: Scale Development and Validation

Johnson, Natasha Cierra, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program and the Social Psychology program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Drs. Riana Anderson and Enrique Neblett at the University of Michigan, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist examining the cognitive process through which Black youth know about, make meaning of, and understand racism, that is, their awareness of racism. Recent work has found that during early adolescence, Black youth can identify and articulate connections between systemic issues and inequities in their schooling experiences. Critical Consciousness theory suggests that without an awareness of oppression, marginalized groups cannot work to disrupt oppressive norms and societal inequities. To date, there has not been a psychometric tool that captures Black youth's cognitive understanding of racism, a specific form of oppression. An understanding of Black youth's cognitions around racism has the potential to provide empirical support for untested theoretical assumptions, enhance clinical approaches to addressing racial stress and trauma, and strengthen research approaches to examining the influence of racism in the lives of Black youth and their families. Finally, understanding how awareness of racism develops may serve as a catalyst to identify points of intervention that may draw on internal and external strengths to combat the negative consequences of racism. The goal of this research project is to contribute to theory and research seeking to understand the influence of racism on the lives of Black youth. The proposed study aims to address these current gaps by: (1) deconstructing the extent to which Black youth understand and can articulate their understanding of racism, and (2) developing a psychometric tool that can streamline and strengthen the connection between studies by using similar measurements and definitions to assess racism awareness. By understanding the extent to which Black youth are aware of the distinct forms of racism, within and across systems, this work can provide empirical support for intervention programs aimed at combating racism. The development of the forthcoming Racism Awareness Scale will be achieved using a three-phase model—item development, scale development, and scale evaluation—of scale development. The first two phases of the scale development consist of designing and testing the dimensionality of the Racism Awareness Scale. The final phase will consist of data collection and analyses for scale evaluation. During this phase of data collection, a survey will be developed that includes other related scales and tests the predictive, convergent, and discriminant validity of the scale. This evaluation will also spark new questions related to the associations between and divergences from experiencing racism and understanding racism. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.