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

TLDR

Racist discrimination is pervasive among African Americans and is strongly linked to psychiatric symptoms and cigarette smoking. The authors developed a brief questionnaire to assess racist discrimination in African Americans and conducted preliminary studies with it. They created the 18‑item Schedule of Racist Events (SRE), a self‑report inventory that measures recent, lifetime, and appraised racist events over the past year and lifetime. The SRE shows extremely high internal consistency, split‑half reliability, and validity as a measure of culturally specific stress, highlighting racism’s negative health consequences.

Abstract

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