The quantitative measurement of ethnic-racial socialization: Meta-analyses on reliabilities of prominent measures in the field

• In Event: Ethnic Racial Socialization

Abstract

Burgeoning for the past 30 years, empirical studies of the correlates and consequences of ethnic-racial socialization have revealed critical ecological pathways of protection for ethnic minority families in the U.S. context. However, generally there has been much less attention to the psychometric properties of the measures used across the field in these studies. Yasui’s (2015) systematic review of the means by which the field assesses the phenomenon demonstrated a diverse array of 41 different empirical self-report measures. Building on this work, the purpose of this study is to identify the most prominent and commonly used measures of ethnic-racial socialization and conduct a meta-analytic synthesis of their internal consistency reliabilities across all the subsequent studies that have utilized the anchor measure. This effort seeks to provide researchers selecting measures for future studies valuable information and comparison of verified psychometric properties as well as assist in determining aspects of research design such as the decision to use manifest summary scores or latent variables. Further, because study samples are pooled to one collective sample in meta-analysis, reliabilities for important sub-groups are established in a robust manner and importantly may assist researchers in sampling determinations.

Our meta-analytic process follows the recommendations of Card (2012) and Lipsey and Wilson (2001). Mainly, after measure selection, we performed an exhaustive literature search and coded for exclusion, we anticipate completing characteristic coding and synthesis analyses by calendar year end. We sought to highlight measures that have had more than n = 20 subsequent uses since the respective anchor study. We have identified five such prominent ethnic-racial socialization measures: (a) Hughes and colleagues’ Multidimensional Measure of Race Socialization, (b) Kim and colleagues’ Asian/Asian American Values Scale (A/AVS), (c) Sellers’ Racial Socialization Questionnaire- Teen/Parent, (d) Stevenson’s’ Teenager Experience of Racial Socialization (TER-S), and Umaña-Taylor’s Familial Ethnic Socialization Measure (FESM). Our literature search revealed over 300 studies (Range n = 24 -113) that have either utilized or cited these measures, of which 18 studies were determined ineligible by our exclusion criteria. The coding of study characteristics is ongoing and we will employ inter-rater reliability analysis across two and often three coders.

We anticipate the five measures to differ in an expectable manner, mainly that measures and sub-scales with more items will generally demonstrate higher reliability than measures/sub-scales with fewer items. We also anticipate that measures will be more reliable with adolescent samples than young child samples. Additional comparisons will include geographic region of study, the language and mode (i.e. electronic versus paper-pencil) of administration, and whether the study was published or unpublished. Findings will be discussed in terms of specific recommendations for measurement selection, researchers' ability to compare to the extant literature, and opportunities for future measurement development.

Authors

• Mariah M. Contreras, Tufts University
  Presenting Author

• Kyungin Kim, University of California - Santa Barbara
  Non-Presenting Author

• Angel Yinlin Guo, Harvard Graduate School of Education
  Non-Presenting Author