Intersectionality,Contextual Specificity,and Everyday Discrimination: Assessing the Difficulty Associated With Identifying a Main Reason for Discrimination Among Racial/Ethnic Minority Respondents

Abstract

The Everyday Discrimination Scale is the most commonly used instrument to assess discrimination. The survey asks respondents about a range of negative interpersonal experiences and then asks them to provide a single main reason for all these experiences. Theories of intersectionality cast doubt on the idea that marginalized individuals generally perceive a single reason for the discrimination they encounter. We analyze data from 23 cognitive interviews with racial/ethnic minority adults to assess the degree of difficulty respondents have in assessing the main reason for their mistreatment, the sources of this difficulty, and potential consequences. Of the 21 respondents who reported experiencing some form of everyday discrimination, 43 percent encountered some difficulty in identifying a single main reason for their experiences; 42 percent of women who perceived some form of discrimination evidence significant frustration in identifying a main reason. Analyses show that, by requiring respondents to identify a single reason for their experiences of discrimination, the resulting data likely provide underestimates—and potentially biased estimates—of particular forms of discrimination.

Keywords

cognitive interviews discrimination intersectionality race gender measurement

The Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS; Williams et al. 1997) is the most commonly used instrument to assess perceptions of discrimination (Bastos et al. 2010). Variations on the scale are numerous, but in its original form, which remains widely used, it first asks respondents about their experiences of day-to-day mistreatment, such as being treated with disrespect and being called names or insulted. It then asks respondents to identify the main reason for their mistreatment: “What do you think was the main reason for this/these experience/experiences?” Researchers analyzing the resulting data classify respondents’ experiences as racial-, weight-, gender-, or age-based discrimination, for example, based on respondents’ answers to this single question (see, e.g., Chou, Asnaani, and Hofmann 2012; Gee et al. 2008; Hudson et al. 2012; Kessler, Mickelson, and Williams 1999).

Survey questions that ask respondents to identify a single reason for the discrimination they face in their day-to-day lives have two possible premises: Either (1) the discrimination individuals experience generally stems from a single axis of inequality (e.g., race or gender) and respondents identify it as such or (2) even though discrimination occurs along multiple axes of inequality (e.g., race and gender), those who perceive discrimination typically interpret their experiences as stemming from a single axis of inequality (e.g., race or gender). These two premises differ to the extent that “actual” cause for discrimination is foregrounded in the former, with perception and interpretation foregrounded in the latter. Both, however, are based on the assumption that perceived discrimination can be analyzed effectively within a single-axis framework (Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall 2013; Cole 2009; Harnois 2013; Moradi and Subich 2002).

Intersectionality (Cole 2009; Collins 2000; Collins and Bilge 2016; Crenshaw 1989, 1991; King 1988) centralizes a starkly different set of premises. Specifically, scholars of intersectionality maintain that people who hold multiple disadvantaged statuses often face multiple forms of discrimination (i.e., “multiple discrimination”) and often face discrimination based on a combination of disadvantaged statuses (i.e., “intersectional discrimination”). In addition, research suggests that experiences of multiple and intersectional discrimination facilitate an awareness of how inequalities work together to structure the social world. Those who hold a “multiple consciousness” (King 1988) or “intersectional awareness” (Curtin, Stewart, and Cole 2015) draw from multiple axes of inequality when interpreting their experiences. In brief, intersectionality theory suggests that asking respondents to identify a single “main reason” for the discrimination they face may rest on an oversimplified assumption about respondents’ experiences and interpretations thereof. This assumption may be particularly problematic for people with multiple disadvantaged statuses.

The present study analyzes data from 23 cognitive interviews with a diverse sample of racial/ethnic minority adults to assess how well the logical premise of this question—that respondents generally perceive a single main reason for their experiences of “everyday discrimination”—fits with respondents’ accounts of their experiences. We begin by analyzing the degree of difficulty respondents have in identifying a main reason for their mistreatment and then assess the sources of this difficulty. We examine the potential consequences of the disjuncture between respondents’ interpretation of their experiences and the survey question for the resulting survey data and end with recommendations for refining the EDS and other instruments for assessing perceived discrimination.

To our knowledge, ours is the first study to examine the extent to which asking respondents to identify the main reason for their mistreatment fits with their experiences and perceptions. It is also the only study we know of to pair an intersectional framework with cognitive interview data and among the very few to centralize intersectionality within the context of survey question evaluation (see, e.g., Harnois 2013; Ifatunji and Harnois 2016). As demonstrated below, the research design is particularly well-suited to assessing how respondents make sense of their experiences, and the results underscore the importance of intersectionality for evaluating and designing discrimination scales.

Background

The EDS

“Everyday discrimination” refers to the recurring indignities, microaggressions, and day-to-day mistreatment that result from being part of a disadvantaged group (Essed 1991). Since its publication more than two decades ago, the EDS (Williams et al. 1997) has become the most commonly used instrument to assess the prevalence and correlates of discrimination (Bastos et al. 2010). Numerous studies confirm its strong psychometric properties (Chan, Tran, and Nguyen 2012; Kim, Sellbom, and Ford 2014; Lewis et al. 2012), though research also suggests that the scale may not perform equally well across diverse social groups (Harnois et al. 2019; Ifatunji and Harnois 2016; Reeve et al. 2011).

A number of variations on the scale exist, and research shows that the question wording affects the frequency with which respondents report discriminatory experiences (Barkan 2018; Shariff-Marco et al. 2011). In what is known as the “one-stage approach,” some versions of the scale highlight race/ethnicity in the beginning of the survey question, asking respondents, “How often have any of the following things happened to you because of your race/ethnicity?” The original version of the scale, which remains widely used and is included in numerous large-scale surveys, follows a “two-stage approach.” Respondents are first asked about how often they have experienced various forms of mistreatment:

In your day-to-day life, how often have any of the following things happened to you? (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 are better than you are. (8)…you are called names or insulted. (9)…you are threatened or harassed. (10)…you are followed around in stores.¹

Respondents are then asked, “What do you think was the main reason for this/these experience(s)? Would you say your ancestry or national origin, your gender, your race, your age, your height or weight, your shade of skin color, your sexual orientation, your educational or employment background, or something else?”

Some versions of the scale allow respondents to select multiple reasons, but large-scale surveys such as the Detroit Area Study, the National Survey of American Life, and the National Latino and Asian American Study—all regularly used to assess perceived discrimination in the United States—ask respondents to identify a single reason for their mistreatment.² In numerous studies based on these and other surveys, respondents’ answers to the question of “What do you think was the main reason for this/these experience/experiences?” serves as the basis for determining whether respondents perceive “racial/ethnic discrimination” (e.g., Chou et al. 2012; Gee et al. 2008; Guthrie et al. 2002; Hudson et al. 2012), “weight discrimination” (e.g., Gee et al. 2008), “age discrimination” (e.g., Vogt Yuan 2007), or discrimination of some other type. While respondents might perceive multiple types of mistreatment, the scale requires them to identify a single “main reason.” An important yet unaddressed issue is how well the underlying premise of this question fits with respondents’ experiences and perceptions thereof. As discussed below, theories of intersectionality cast doubt on this premise.

Intersectionality and Perceived Discrimination

Theoretical and methodological approaches to intersectionality vary, but a common theme within this scholarship is a focus on the relationships among multiple statuses, identities, and systems of inequality (Collins and Bilge 2016; Zinn and Dill 1996). Intersectionality highlights the fact that every person has multiple social statuses, and that these social statuses work in combination with one another to shape the opportunities, experiences, and identities of all people, in dynamic and contextually-specific ways (Collins 2000; Zinn and Dill 1996).

Intersectionality highlights three potential problems associated with asking individuals to identify a single main reason for the discrimination they encounter on a day-to-day basis. First, research shows that people with multiple disadvantaged statuses often face “multiple discrimination” (Grollman 2014; Harnois 2014; Harnois and Bastos 2018). A gay black man may face racism in some contexts, for example, and homophobia in others, and in still others, both. Identifying a single main reason for the totality of one’s experiences of mistreatment might be difficult for those who regularly encounter multiple forms of discrimination. Second, as Crenshaw (1989) argues, discrimination against people with multiple marginal statuses sometimes takes unique forms and cannot be understood fully within the context of a single system of inequality. Experiences of “intersectional discrimination”—unfair treatment that stems from multiple systems of inequality simultaneously (e.g., gendered racism, racialized homophobia, gendered ageism) are rendered illegible when individuals are permitted to identify only one main reason for their experiences.

Third, beyond drawing attention to individuals’ experiences with discrimination, research shows that individuals—particularly those with multiple disadvantaged statuses—often understand themselves and interpret their experiences within the context of multiple systems of inequality. King (1988) argued that as a result of living in a society simultaneously organized by race, class, and gender, and experiencing the combined effects of racism, classism, and sexism, black women often hold a “multiple consciousness”—an awareness of how multiple systems of inequality work together to structure daily life (see also Collins 2000). More recent analyses show evidence of intersectional consciousness among men and women in activist groups (Curtin et al. 2015; White et al. 1997), as well as among African American women and men more generally (Harnois 2010). Those who understand themselves and interpret their experiences within the context of multiple axes of inequality may find it difficult, if not impossible, to identify a single main reason for the discrimination they face.

In brief, an intersectional perspective on discrimination suggests that individuals with multiple minority statuses often experience multiple and intersectional discrimination and that when this mistreatment occurs, individuals might draw from multiple axes of inequality when interpreting their experiences. Asking respondents to identify a main reason for the mistreatment they face may not fit well with respondents’ lived experiences. The interpretive frameworks respondents use to make sense of their experience may be more complex than the EDS allows. The degree of mismatch between the underlying premise of the survey question and respondents’ perceptions of their experiences may be especially severe for individuals with multiple minority statuses.

Method

This study analyzes data from cognitive interviews with racial/ethnic minority adults to assess how and to what extent asking respondents to identify the main reason for their mistreatment fits with their interpretations of their experiences. Cognitive interviews are an established methodological approach for evaluating question design and response problems. They provide insight into how respondents interpret and answer survey questions and have been used to assess problematic response categories and variation in questions interpretation (Madans et al. 2011; Nápoles-Springer et al. 2006; Reeve et al. 2011; Tanur 1992; Willis 2015). As described by Willis (2015), cognitive interviews can be analyzed with either a deductive approach, an inductive approach, or with a hybrid of the two. Ours follows a hybrid model. Theories of intersectionality were foundational for designing our interview questions (detailed below) and for motivating our project more generally. Our analysis of emergent patterns and themes followed a more inductive approach, consistent with grounded theory. Our goals were to identify and assess patterns in how interviewees made sense of their experiences with mistreatment and how these experiences and perceptions were ultimately represented in the EDS survey data.

Participants

Participants include 23 racial/ethnic minority men (n = 10) and women (n = 13) living in central North Carolina, United States. Small samples are common in cognitive interview studies, and research suggests that samples of this size, and even smaller, are effective in identifying problems related to inappropriate questions and response categories (see, e.g., DeMaio and Rothgeb 1996; Presser and Blair 1994; Willis 2004). Participants were recruited primarily through fliers posted at community centers, libraries, stores, and other public spaces. They ranged in age from 21 to 74, with a mean age of 40.3; two participants, one man and one woman, identified as sexual minorities and the others as heterosexual.

Procedure

Interviews took place in a five-month interval during the fall and winter of 2017. All were conducted in English and took place in a private setting convenient for the respondent. Respondents who self-identified as black or African American were interviewed by a black woman, and respondents who identified as either Asian, Asian American, or Hispanic/Latino/a were interviewed by either a white woman or a black woman. Research suggests that racial/ethnic concordance between interviewer and interviewee can be important for allowing respondents to feel comfortable discussing sensitive racial/ethnic issues (Bastos et al. 2009; Hill 2002). In our study, racial/ethnic minority respondents with the white interviewer seemed comfortable and discussed issues of mistreatment directly and at length. Consistent with the best practices in cognitive interview methods (Willis 2015), participants were given a US$50 visa gift card after completing the interview. Interviews typically lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. They were recorded with a digital voice recorder and professionally transcribed.

At the start of each interview, the interviewer read a script thanking respondents for their participation, describing the structure of the interview, and the broad 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….” Several closed-ended background questions were asked, and then the interviewer administered the EDS. We also administered the Major Experiences of Discrimination Scale (Williams et al. 1997) but do not assess that in the current study due to space limitations. Structured retrospective probing followed wherein participants were asked a series of open-ended questions about their understanding of the survey questions (e.g., “Can you tell me in your own words what the question is asking?”) as well as their experiences (e.g., “Can you tell me more about the times this has happened to you?”). We also asked a number of questions concerning respondents’ assessment of the reason or reasons these events occurred (e.g., “Was it hard or easy for you to identify the main reason [or reasons] that this happened?”).

Analysis

Transcripts were coded and analyzed by the lead author, using MAXQDA version 2018, a software package for qualitative data analysis. Respondents’ accounts of their experiences were coded to indicate the various social statuses and identities they invoked during the retrospective probing (e.g., gender, body size, race/ethnicity). We included implied social statuses as part of this coding. Our code for “class,” for example, includes references to respondents who felt looked down upon when others “flash[ed] their [educational] pedigree” and when people attributed their mistreatment to others’ perception that they were poor. Similarly, our coding of “race/ethnicity” includes references to respondents who perceived they had been treated badly because of their locs or due to their being perceived as “illegal immigrants.” We created codes corresponding to which EDS question the respondent was discussing at all points in the interview. We also analyzed and coded the interviews with a more inductive approach, making note of the themes that emerged.

Results

Table 1 provides a summary of interviewee background characteristics, and the degree of difficulty they evidenced with identifying a main reason for their mistreatment. As shown, two respondents indicated they had no experiences of everyday discrimination and thus were not asked to provide a reason for its occurrence. Twelve respondents (57 percent of those who reported experiencing mistreatment) evidenced no difficulty in providing a main reason for the discrimination that they had faced, while nine (43 percent) either initially provided multiple reasons, asked if it was allowable, or provided a single reason based on intersecting identities. When pressed further, those who expressed the desire to choose more than one reason did ultimately settle on one option (with two people selecting “other”). The “main reason” ultimately chosen by each respondent is shown in Table 1.

Table 1.

Interviewee Characteristics and Degree of Difficulty in Identifying a “Main Reason” for Their Experiences of Discrimination.

Respondent Name, by degree of difficulty	Main Reason as Reported in Everyday Discrimination Scale	Race/Ethnicity	Gender	Education
Concordance
Sasha	Race	African American	Woman	Master’s
Rebecca	Other	African American	Woman	Master’s
Sherri	Height/weight	African American	Woman	Master’s
Tanya	Race	African American	Woman	Bachelor’s
Briana	Age	African American	Woman	Bachelor’s
Robin	Race	Vietnamese American	Woman	High school
Aaron	Race	Black	Man	High school
William	Race	African American	Man	GED
Michael	Race	Black	Man	High school
Ben	Race	Black	Man	Bachelor’s
Victor	Education/employment	African American	Man	Bachelor’s
José	Other	Hispanic	Man	GED
Adjustment
Neil	National origin	Indian	Man	Master’s
Stephen	Ancestry	Black	Man	Associate’s
Carlos	Skin color	Latino	Man	Bachelor’s
Tamika	Race	Black	Woman	High school
Frustration
Louise	Race	Black/multicultural	Woman	High school
Anita	Gender	Hispanic	Woman	Master’s
Trayonna	Education/employment	African American	Woman	Master’s
Joti	Other	Indian	Woman	Master’s
Meghan	Other	African American	Woman	Bachelor’s
No perceived everyday discrimination
Alicia	Not applicable	African American	Woman	Bachelor’s
Ricardo	Not applicable	Hispanic	Man	High school

Note: Concordance refers to respondents who evidenced no difficulty with identifying a main reason for their mistreatment, adjustment refers to interviewees who adjusted their responses to fit the requirement of only reporting one reason, and frustration refers to those who evidenced frustration with the constraint of a single reason for their experiences with discrimination.

That 43 percent of respondents who reported experiencing mistreatment wanted to provide more than one reason for their mistreatment suggests at least some degree of mismatch between the underlying premise of the survey question (i.e., that respondents generally perceive a single main reason for their mistreatment) and respondents’ interpretation of their experiences. Analyses of the open-ended portion of our interviews shed light on (1) the degree of difficulty respondents had in identifying a main reason for their mistreatment, (2) the sources of respondents’ difficulty in identifying a main reason, and (3) the consequences of this difficulty for the resulting survey data.

Degree of Difficulty in Identifying a “Main Reason”

When we asked respondents to identify the main reason for all of their experiences of everyday discrimination, respondents’ answers generally reflected either concordance, adjustment, or frustration. We use the word concordance to describe the responses of those 12 respondents (6 men and 6 women) who evidenced no difficulty with identifying a main reason for their mistreatment. Four respondents adjusted their responses to fit the requirements of the survey. These respondents (three men, one woman) initially indicated that they would prefer to offer multiple reasons for their mistreatment, but when they were asked to identify a single main reason, they did so with relative ease. For the remaining five respondents (all women), asking them to identify a main reason for their mistreatment resulted in frustration. We elaborate on each below.

Concordance

Twelve respondents indicated that they had some experiences of everyday discrimination and found it relatively easy to identify the source of their mistreatment. Briana, an African American woman in her mid-20s who holds a bachelor’s degree, reported with ease that age was the main reason for her mistreatment. In the open-ended portion of the interview, she focused on the mistreatment she encountered in her workplace and, in particular, on her relationship with her boss. When asked to identify the main reason for her being treated with less courtesy than other people, she responds with exasperation, “Because of my age. Because of my age. Because of my age.” She explained further, “It’s just everyday, because she [my boss] feels like she’s older. She knows more, and that because I’m younger […] So, it’s just age.” Similarly, William, an African American man with a GED, identified race as the main reason for his mistreatment. When describing his experiences of mistreatment, he consistently attributed them to race, explaining, “We live in an American society where, once again, race comes first…. They always put us in the category of dumb, uneducated, and we only know one thing and that’s ghetto stuff.” When asked to reflect more on the main reason for his mistreatment, he replied without hesitation, “Race. Race. Race, without a doubt.”

José, a self-described Hispanic man who holds a GED, selected “other” as the main reason for his mistreatment, but his response nonetheless reflects concordance with the survey question. He went on to explain that the main reason for his experience was “people’s ignorance.” When asked, during the retrospective portion of the interview, if he had thought of any other reasons for his mistreatment, he indicated that he had also thought about selecting “race,” but then went on to explain, “For me, the best thing to think is, okay, they don’t know. […] I try to…look at good side, say it’s not racist, it’s just they’re not good people. Their knowledge is very small.” Even though José ultimately decided on “other,” his explanation in the open-ended portion of the interview reveals that he perceives his experiences as stemming primarily from race/ethnicity. His selection of “other” reflects a conscious decision to reframe these experiences as stemming from “ignorance” in order to cope with the mistreatment.

Overall, respondents in this group evidenced little difficulty deciding on the main reason for their mistreatment. Their understanding of the situation concorded with the premise of the survey question. For other respondents, the decision was less straightforward.

Adjustment

Three men and one woman initially provided multiple reasons for their mistreatment, or asked to, but when pushed to select a single reason adjusted their responses with relative ease. When asked to identify the main reason for his experiences, Stephen, a heterosexual black man in his mid-40s who holds an associate’s degree, responded, “I feel like it’s a combination, but if I had to choose one, I would say probably my ancestry.” Carlos is a self-described Latino in his 20s who currently attends graduate school. When asked about the main reason for his experiences, he initially asked, “Can you, I, choose more than one, or is it like the most?” He later explained that he felt as if his professors disrespected him due to his field of study, but that he also felt mistreated due to his skin color. When told he could only choose one, he chose “skin color.” Tamika, a black woman in her 20s with a high school degree, asked, “Can you choose multiple?” and, when told “no,” selected “race” without hesitation. Neil, who is in his 30s, holds a master’s degree, and identifies as Indian, described his experiences of discrimination as stemming from “national origin/skin color,” noting that “both are correlated.” But, when asked to choose just one, quickly selected “national origin.”

Frustration

Five women respondents—42 percent of the women who reported experiencing everyday mistreatment—evidenced significant frustration when asked to identify the main reason for their experiences. Trayonna is an African American woman in her 30s who holds a master’s degree and identifies as a sexual minority. Her response illustrates the difficulty some respondents experienced when asked to attribute their experiences of everyday discrimination to a single social status:

Interviewer:

What do you think was the main reason for this or these experiences? Would you say your ancestry or national origin, your gender, your race, your age, your height or weight, your shade of skin color, your sexual orientation, your education or employment background, or other?

Trayonna:

Educational and employment background. Nationality. Complexion. Maybe my weight?

Interviewer:

Okay. So out of those which one….

Trayonna:

And my gender.

Interviewer:

No problem. So out of all those, which one would you say is like the top main reason?

Trayonna:

I feel most insulted ironically because of my educational background. I think it’s a combination of being African American and having a degree from a well-known university. I’m still treated, like I am patronized almost like. I’m always getting fact checked or knowledge checked […]

Interviewer:

So, I’ll say your educational or employment background as the top and maybe….

Trayonna:

My race as like…. It’s side to side. Educated black woman is really [it]….

Not only does Trayonna find it difficult to choose a main reason for her mistreatment, she actively resists the premise of the question itself. She refuses to limit her response to a single status and instead grounds each of the experiences she describes in the particulars of that situation: being treated badly due to sexual orientation at thanksgiving, being treated badly at work due to her being an educated black woman. “It’s case by case, really.” she says. When forced to choose one “main reason,” she selected “education/employment background.”

Similarly, Joti, a heterosexual woman in her 20s who immigrated to the United States from India three years’ prior, also evidenced frustration when asked to identify the main reason for her experiences. She reflected, “The main reason…. So, they’re different questions, so it’s like different situations at different times, you know? So, it’s like multiple things…multiple experiences on different facets of…of behavior maybe.” When forced to choose one “main reason” she selected “other.” When asked to describe how she came to that answer, she said:

It’s…it’s a hard one because I have to…there’s no one answer to it, you know? When you’re saying that what is the main it is like…there are different factors, I mean, we as…as humans we’re very complex…imagine how complex the society must be!

Louise is a heterosexual woman in her mid-50s, who holds a high school degree and describes herself as “black and multicultural.” She also found this question frustrating. When asked about the main reason for her experiences of everyday mistreatment, she initially responded, “Probably my race and gender,” but selected “race” when told she could only choose one of the two. Throughout the retrospective probing, Louise similarly emphasized the interconnectedness of race and gender:

Interviewer:

When I asked you at the end of all these questions…what did you think was the main reason for all these experiences?

Louise:

[…] Now the questions you asked me obviously are related to race, gender, discrimination, injustice, [the] truth [of] all that we live.

Interviewer:

That’s what you were thinking about, all those different terms?

Louise:

Yes, because I think it all applies. […] I just think because of my race and being a female. This is so unfortunate, the society that promotes this division.

For these respondents, the idea that there was one main explanation for their mistreatment was at odds with their understanding of themselves and the world, and they found answering the question both difficult and frustrating.

In sum, the degree of difficulty that respondents had in selecting a main reason for their mistreatment varied significantly and was intertwined with gender. For slightly more than half of the respondents (including men and women), the question was in concordance with their interpretations of their experiences, and identifying a main reason was easy. Three men and one woman would have preferred to select multiple reasons for their mistreatment but adapted their responses to the requirements of the survey with little difficulty. But for 5 of the 12 women who reported experiencing everyday discrimination, being asked to attribute these experiences to a single main reason elicited frustration. In the next sections, we examine the sources of this difficulty and its implications for the resulting survey data.

Sources of Difficulty in Identifying a “Main Reason”

In the open-ended portion of the interview, we asked respondents to describe their experiences of each type of mistreatment (e.g., “being called names or insulted”) and to elaborate on the reason or reasons that they thought this mistreatment had occurred. Three theme sources of difficulty emerged: multiple discrimination, intersectional discrimination, and contextual specificity. These themes were particularly present among those who evidenced frustration but were also evident among those whose responses evidenced adjustment and concordance. Our analyses suggest that it is not so much whether respondents invoke multiple discrimination, intersectional discrimination, or contextual specificity, but the degree to which one or more of these themes is central to respondents’ experiences that make it difficult to attribute one’s experiences with day-to-day mistreatment to a single factor. We discuss each theme briefly below.

Multiple discrimination

The term “multiple discrimination” is used to describe the phenomenon wherein individuals with more than one disadvantaged status may be subjected to different forms of discrimination at different times. Among our respondents, reports of multiple discrimination were common, particularly among racial/ethnic minority women. Meghan, an African American woman in her 20s, described her experiences of being treated “as if she were not smart” in terms of gender:

I feel like that’s a man thing. Mansplaining. Like when they try to talk down to you and think because you’re a woman you don’t understand what they’re saying, that you don’t understand anything. It’s already making my eye twitch […] Men think that they know more.

When asked what came to her mind when she thought about her experiences of receiving poor service in restaurants or stores, however, she shifted the focus to racial discrimination. She responded: “Waiting. Sometimes people will be forced to wait longer and they’ll ask, ‘Was it because the color of my skin?’”

Similarly, Anita, an Hispanic woman in her 30s who holds a master’s degree, indicated that most of the everyday discrimination she faces stems from gender, but went on to describe several instances of racial discrimination, including being called a “coconut,” “Brown on the outside, white on the inside,” and being “racially attacked” by people “from my own race” for, in their words, “being an insult to our race.”

Importantly, perceptions of multiple discrimination were also found among those respondents who easily identified a main reason for their mistreatment. Aaron, a black Muslim in his early 30s, who holds a high school degree indicated that it was “pretty easy” to identify “race” as the main reason for his mistreatment. But when asked what came to his mind as he heard the question about being treated as though he was not smart, he described discrimination based on a variety of social statuses:

[M]e and my [family] speak Arabic, so when they hear us speak Arabic they like, “Nah, this person is…he can’t be this…he can’t be this or you ain’t…you ain’t true Muslim you’re more of that Nation of Islam.” I’m like, “Why can’t I be Muslim? Like I…because that’s who I am and…why can’t I know about the Quran or know just as much as you, just because you’re from this [other country] and you feel like you’re the true Muslim.” So, I deal with that. I deal with discrimination in my…in my religion. I deal with discrimination of being a black male and I deal with discrimination in my own black community of people, be like, “Oh, you live in the hood,” or, “Oh you…you conforming. You…you being an Uncle Tom.”

Similarly, Robin, a self-described “small, short” Vietnamese American woman in her 20s, describes instances of being mistreated on the basis of size, age, and gender, but selected “race/ethnicity” with apparent ease: “Like I say I can’t say the specific reason, because no one ever outright says I don’t like you, because x, y, z, but I’m pretty sure it’s because of race. Maybe gender too, but it’s usually race I think.”

Intersectional discrimination

Intersectional discrimination refers to instances of discrimination that are the product of multiple social statuses and/or systems of inequality. Focusing on the experiences of black women in the United States, Crenshaw (1989:149) explains that black women often “experience discrimination as Black women—not the sum of race and sex discrimination, but as Black women.” Although none used the term “intersectional discrimination,” many racial/ethnic minority women in our sample, including four of the five women who found the “main reason” question frustrating, described experiences of discrimination that they interpreted as stemming from a combination of minority statuses.

When asked what came to mind when she thinks of her experiences of being “called names or insulted,” Louise, who works at a large retail store, responded, “My Job.” When asked, “Can you tell me in your own words what you think the question is asking?” She responds, “Yeah, shit! Being a black woman, do you feel you was being insulted? Yeah, I do. Black female, put in big bold letters, yeah.” Trayonna’s account of her mistreatment as stemming from her position as an “educated black woman” also reflects the concept of intersectional discrimination.

Women and men recounted experiences of everyday discrimination that they perceived as stemming from what Collins (2004) terms “controlling images” of black men as “dangerous criminals,” and black women as “angry black women.” Most common were racialized-class stereotypes. Black women and black men perceived that others assumed they were poor, uneducated, unintelligent, and dishonest. Interviewees recounted numerous examples of being given poor service at restaurants and stores, which they interpreted as stemming from the perception that they had little money. Sherri, an African American woman in her 60s, who holds a master’s degree, provides one such example:

Sherri:

Well, when I first moved here, for the first three years that I was here, I did not drive. I used public transportation. So, I use[d] to have a cart, a little handcart, because that’s what I learned in graduate school: don’t carry what you can roll. So, I have a little cart, and just the fact that I would come into the stores with the cart, just seemed to single me out because the cart was a reflection of the fact that I was a pedestrian versus someone riding in a car. […]

Interviewer:

Can you tell me about the reason or reasons this has happened to you?

Sherri:

Now, in that case, just discrimination. Discrimination as an African American and discrimination as just a poor black woman.

Tamika, an African American woman in her early 20s currently attending college, described day-to-day discrimination that she attributes to the “angry black woman” stereotype:

Interviewer:

When I asked you about how often people act as if they are afraid of you, what came to your mind when you were listening to this question?

Tamika:

[…] What came to mind? Being black is scary to a lot of people—like everyone. Everyone.

Interviewer:

Can you tell me more in your own words what you think this question is asking?

Tamika:

Can you walk on the street without someone acting as if you’re going to knock them down? […] I clear a sidewalk every time I walk [around] here, […] I have plenty of people completely just hop out of my way as if I’m about to like bulldoze them down […] Or just people who are extremely apologetic all the time as if you’re going to be angry at them […] I feel as if people walk on eggshells around black people especially as a black woman with the whole, you know, angry black woman thing going on, people are just super sensitive to your everything in a way that’s just kind of too much.

As was the case with multiple discrimination, perceptions of intersectional discrimination did not necessarily generate difficulty with identifying a main reason for their experiences of everyday discrimination. Despite describing experiences of “discrimination as an African American and discrimination as just a poor black woman,” Sherri chose “height/weight” as the main reason for her experiences and did so without hesitation. The same holds for Robin, who indicated that people often dismissed her due to the combination of her small stature, young appearance, and gender.

Contextual specificity

Many respondents conveyed that the reason for their experiences of mistreatment varied across a range of interpersonal interactions and across contexts. This theme of contextual specificity is related to, yet conceptually distinct from, the theme of multiple discrimination. Many respondents noted that, in at least some cases, their mistreatment did not stem from a social status, but was rather attributable to people being in bad moods or having bad days, and thus treating other people badly. As Anita explained,

I think with some of them, especially the ones with slurs or harassment or anything, was because of gender, ‘cause they were directed by males towards me, so that kind of makes sense. Following around in stores, I think they were doing their job. It wasn’t just me. So, they followed multiple people. I don’t think it had anything to do with anything.

When asked whether it was hard or easy for him to identify the main reason for his experiences, Carlos (described above) responded:

Hard, because you know it’s not always that [skin color]. It’s not always one thing. It’s multiple things typically […] I always try to like think of other reasons why certain situations might be playing out the way they do, but I feel like, knowing like who I am, and things I have gone through, I feel like it’s that one thing that’s always in the back of your mind. It’s like is it that, is it that? I don’t know […] I feel like it’s always multi-factorial but…in some situations, there is one thing that sticks out a little more than the others.

Context also matters because the experiences and salient identities of some respondents—and indeed the socially constructed statuses they held—varied dramatically across context. Joti (described above) immigrated to the United States from India three years’ prior and encountered difficulty with interpreting all of the questions on the EDS. Midway through the EDS, she expressed significant frustration:

All of this I’m thinking about…I moved to the [United] States, it’s been more than two years. So, I’m keeping in mind what happened to me last year. I’m not keeping in mind what happened to me in my entire life. So, am I supposed to give you all [the] cumulative response right from birth to now? Because then it will drastically change because the way things function in India, and the way it happens here in [the United] States, it’s completely different. So, questions…like the answers might just turn upside down, you know? […] So, should I take it into consideration just two years in [the United] States or my entire life?

In fact, the notion of stable, context-free, “everyday discrimination” seemed so at odds with Joti’s experience that she and the interviewer decided to go through the EDS twice—once for her experiences in the United States and once for her experiences in India. In both cases, she ultimately chose “other” as the main reason, citing the numerous intertwined facets of the society, including public policy, geography, and poverty that, in her view, set the stage for interpersonal mistreatment.

Anita and Meghan were both born and raised in the United States but had spent time living abroad. Both expressed uncertainty about how their experiences in other countries should fit into the survey, and both evidenced frustration when asked to identify the main reason for their mistreatment. Meghan had spent a semester abroad in Asia and described her race and body size becoming salient aspects of her identity while there. Anita described working abroad for many years and explained that her inability to speak the language marked her as a foreigner. Combined with her gender, her status as a foreigner led to people often assuming she was a sex worker, and with that came repeated sexual harassment and physical injury. While one might reasonably take issue with whether experiences living abroad fall within the theoretical concept of “everyday discrimination,” it was clear that, for at least some interviewees, these experiences were at the forefront of their minds when answering the survey questions.

Taken together, our analyses reveal considerable variation in the difficulty within which respondents identify a main reason for their day-to-day mistreatment and suggest that racial/ethnic minority women may struggle with this question more than men. Those who evidenced the most difficulty with answering this question tended to emphasize their experiences of multiple and intersectional discrimination and/or struggled with how their contextually specific experiences fit into a question about “day-to-day experiences.” In the next section, we examine how respondents’ complex and multidimensional experiences are represented in the resulting survey data.

Representations of Mistreatment in the EDS

Figures 1 and 2 show visual representations of the social statuses that interviewees used when relating their experiences of mistreatment. Figure 1 shows data from those participants (seven men, five women) who indicated race/ethnicity (including race, ancestry, national origin, or skin color) as the main reason for their discrimination.³ Each horizontal line in Figure 1 corresponds to a different EDS item. The presence and size of squares in the figure correspond to the number of participants who invoked a particular social status when describing their experiences.

Figure 1.

Social statuses mentioned in each Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS) item among respondents who selected race/ethnicity as the main reason for their mistreatment (N = 12).

Figure 2.

Social statuses mentioned in each Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS) item among respondents who did not select race/ethnicity as the main reason for their mistreatment (N = 11).

The high concentration of relatively large squares under the “Race/Ethnicity” column in Figure 1 indicates that respondents who identified race or ethnicity as the main reason for their mistreatment in the survey component also drew heavily from racial/ethnic statuses when narrating their experiences with various types of mistreatment. The smaller squares dispersed throughout the remainder of the figure indicate that, even among those participants who identified race/ethnicity as the primary reason for their discrimination, other social statuses also came into play with some regularity. Since all of the individuals represented in Figure 1 identified race/ethnicity as the main reason for their mistreatment, the nonrace/nonethnicity squares reflect perceptions of multiple and/or intersectional discrimination.

Figure 2 shows the same information for the 11 participants (3 men, 8 women) who selected something other than race/ethnicity as the main reason for their mistreatment (including those selecting “other”) as well as the two individuals who indicated initially they had none of these experiences and so were coded as “not applicable.” As in Figure 1, numerous small squares are dispersed throughout, suggesting that, in the aggregate, participants drew on numerous social statuses and identities when discussing their mistreatment. What is perhaps most striking about Figure 2, however, is the cluster of squares under the “Race/Ethnicity” column. This demonstrates that respondents who identified something other than race/ethnicity as the main reason for their mistreatment repeatedly invoked their race and/or ethnicity when discussing their experiences of mistreatment. An example is Victor who selected “educational or employment background” as the main reason for his everyday mistreatment, but who saw his racial status as playing a key role in his being followed around in stores. Gender, and to a lesser extent age, class, and body size, is repeatedly mentioned as sources of mistreatment. In particular, several respondents invoked their gender when describing experiences “being called names or insulted” and being “threatened or harassed.” It is race/ethnicity, however, that is the most commonly invoked status among these respondents.

Taken together, Figures 1 and 2 help to demonstrate the benefits and limitations of asking survey respondents to identify the main reason for their day-to-day mistreatment. The cluster of squares under the Race/Ethnicity column in Figure 1 shows that, for those who select race/ethnicity as the main reason for their mistreatment, their answer to the “main reason” question aligns well with their description of the type of mistreatment they encounter in their day-to-day lives. Men are somewhat overrepresented in this group. Figure 2 suggests a different story for those who selected something other than race/ethnicity as the main reason for their mistreatment. Although our sample is small, it nonetheless reveals a pronounced mismatch between the social statuses these participants used when describing their experiences (responses which emphasized race/ethnicity) and the “main reason” for their mistreatment (responses of something other than race/ethnicity). Women are overrepresented in this group. Similarly, both Figures 1 and 2, but especially Figure 2, show that participants see gender inequality as an important source of day-to-day mistreatment, though in the closed-ended survey, only one participant indicated gender as the main reason for her mistreatment.

Discussion

The EDS is the most widely used survey instrument to assess perceived discrimination, and data generated from the scale form the basis of hundreds of scholarly articles. Central to our study was the follow-up question included in the original and still widely used version of the scale, which asks respondents to identify the main reason for their mistreatment. Intersectional scholars argue that systems of inequality work with and through one another to structure the social world, resulting in both multiple and intersectional discrimination. Intersectionality research also suggests that those who experience multiple forms of discrimination interpret these experiences through a lens of multiple inequalities. Yet, existing literature tells us little about how experiences of multiple or intersectional discrimination are represented in the EDS and other surveys which allow respondents to attribute their mistreatment to only one social status.

Consistent with intersectionality, our analyses showed a severe mismatch between the logical premise of the “main reason” question and respondents’ interpretations of their experiences. Nine of the 21 respondents who reported perceiving mistreatment either found the question to be a source of significant frustration or needed to adjust their answers to fit the requirements of the survey. The difficulty our interviewees encountered suggests that the underlying premise of the question does not fit well with respondents’ experiences, and this mismatch may be particularly pronounced for racial/ethnic minority women, resulting in their attributing discrimination to “other” reasons rather than the multiple attributions they perceive or arbitrarily picking one of the multiple social statuses that they attribute to these experiences.

The themes that emerged from our interviews clarify the specific sources of difficulty. While previous studies (e.g., Crocker et al. 1991; Major and Crocker 1993) draw attention to the “attributional ambiguity” that sometimes characterizes experiences of mistreatment, our respondents’ difficulty with identifying a main reason for their mistreatment generally did not stem from ambiguity, but rather stemmed from multiplicity. Interviewees described experiences of multiple discrimination and many described intersectional discrimination. The types of mistreatment participants experienced varied markedly across contexts, making it difficult for many respondents, particularly women, to identify a single main reason for their everyday mistreatment.

Our comparison of the answers participants provided when initially responding to EDS and their answers to the open-ended questions during the retrospective probing showed that, among those who chose race or ethnicity as the main reason for their mistreatment, there was a close correspondence between the two. For respondents attributing their mistreatment to other social statuses, however, the experiences they related during the open-ended portion of the interview differed substantially from the reason they identified as the main reason for their mistreatment. In particular, respondents frequently interpreted their experiences in terms of race/ethnicity (and to some extent gender) as much or more than other social statuses but identified other social statuses as the main reason for their mistreatment. Despite numerous examples of gender-based mistreatment, including sexual harassment, catcalling, “mansplaining,” and other instances of being disrespected and talked down to, only one participant indicated gender as the “main reason” for her mistreatment. This finding echoes Harnois’s (2014) argument that, when respondents are allowed to choose only one social status as the basis of their mistreatment, the resulting data provide underestimates—and potentially biased estimates—of the prevalence of discrimination. Our results shed light on how this framework plays out within the EDS, when respondents are asked for a single main attribution.

Implications for Future Research

Although studies show that small and nonrepresentative samples are often effective at detecting problems associated with survey questions and response categories (Willis 2015), we note here that our study is limited in that it relies on a small nonrepresentative sample, and includes only English-speaking respondents, in a small geographical area. Future research with larger and more diverse samples is needed to determine the robustness of the patterns we have identified here.

With these limitations in mind, our results offer insights for future refinement of the EDS, and for researchers refining and developing other discrimination scales. At the most basic level, our findings suggest that asking respondents to identify a single main reason for the everyday discrimination they face may be inappropriate for two reasons. First, many respondents perceive acts of discrimination as stemming from the combination of multiple social statuses. In these cases, asking respondents to interpret their experiences through the lens of a single social status is at odds with their understanding of their lives. A second, more frequent issue for our interviewees, involved the contextual specificity of discrimination. Respondents’ experiences varied significantly across contexts, and these contexts exposed them to different types of discrimination (i.e., multiple discrimination). Indeed, contextual differences were so pronounced that many respondents struggled with the very notion of “everyday life.”

As previously noted, numerous versions of the EDS exist. In some versions, the instrument begins by explicitly invoking race, “How often have any of the following things happened to you because of your race/ethnicity?” In other versions of the scale, participants can select multiple reasons for their discrimination. Both approaches circumvent the potential bias introduced by asking respondents to identify a single reason for their mistreatment, but both also introduce limitations. The former limits the scale only to measuring racial/ethnic discrimination, and the latter fails to differentiate between those forms of discrimination that respondents deem more or less pervasive in their lives. Neither addresses the ways in which experiences of discrimination vary across contexts.

The findings from our study point to three specific recommendations for those seeking to refine or develop scales to assess interpersonal discrimination that are sensitive to issues of intersectionality. First, the extent to which our interviewees drew from multiple social statuses when interpreting their experiences, along with the extent to which they indicated their preference for providing multiple reasons for their mistreatment, suggests that the scale would benefit from allowing respondents to select multiple reasons for their mistreatment. Scheim and Bauer (2019) recently developed a scale of perceived discrimination that eliminates all questions about why the mistreatment occurred, arguing that researchers might infer the reason for discrimination based on respondents’ social statuses. Our data suggest that this strategy may also be misguided. For one, such a scale fails to differentiate among intersectional discrimination, multiple discrimination, and discrimination based on a single social status. It also fails to distinguish among any particular form of discrimination and so is unable to assess the prevalence or correlates of any specific type of discrimination (Harnois and Bastos 2019). Moreover, our findings demonstrate clearly that, even when respondents occupy multiple marginal statuses, some interpret their mistreatment along a single axis of inequality. Perceptions of why mistreatment occurred do not map seamlessly onto the social statuses that respondents occupy.

Given the extent to which respondents reported that their experiences varied across contexts, our second recommendation is that future revisions of the scale could also benefit from allowing respondents to identify a different “reason” for each of the EDS items. Third, we suggest that the questions should include a specific a time frame, for example, “within the past year,” which, for many respondents, would also imply a particular geographical context. Our interviewees explained to us repeatedly that the types of mistreatment they encountered differed not only across institutional and cultural contexts but across the course of their lives. Several older respondents noted that the “everyday” discrimination they faced when they were younger, and living in a different historical–political context is not the same type of “everyday discrimination” they face today. Asking respondents to reflect upon the experiences over the past year would reduce the cognitive burden on respondents and improve the accuracy of the scale.

Conclusion

That more nuance arises in the open-ended portion of the survey is itself neither noteworthy nor surprising. What is noteworthy, though not necessarily surprising from an intersectional framework, is the degree of difficulty respondents encountered when asked to identify a main reason for the entirety of their experiences as well as the uneven gender distribution of this difficulty. By assessing the degree of difficulty, the sources of this difficulty, and the consequences of this difficulty for the resulting survey data, our study points to important avenues for further scale refinement and future scale development. Ours is the first study to pair an intersectional theoretical framework with cognitive interviews for the purpose of survey question evaluation. Our results suggest that similar analyses, on a range of social phenomena, may push survey evaluation research in new fruitful and more inclusive directions.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project was supported by the Wake Forest University Pilot Research grant program, the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute with support made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a Visiting International Fellowship in Research Methodology at the University of Surrey (United Kingdom) awarded to Catherine Harnois. João L Bastos was partially supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), with a Research Productivity Grant, registered under the number 304503/2018-5.

ORCID iDs

Catherine E. Harnois

João L. Bastos

Notes

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