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Cited by 263Racial and Ethnic Identity ResearchRace, Genetics, and SocietyHealth disparities and outcomes

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 72 of the 74 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

A new conceptualization of ethnicity for social epidemiologic and health equity research

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Ford, Chandra L., Harawa, Nina T.·2010·Social Science & Medicine
DOI 10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.04.008PMC PMC2908006
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Abstract

Although social stratification persists in the US, differentially influencing the well-being of ethnically defined groups, ethnicity concepts and their implications for health disparities remain under-examined. Ethnicity is a complex social construct that influences personal identity and group social relations. Ethnic identity, ethnic classification systems, the groupings that compose each system and the implications of assignment to one or another ethnic category are place-, time- and context-specific. In the US, racial stratification uniquely shapes expressions of and understandings about ethnicity. Ethnicity is typically invoked via the term, 'race/ethnicity'; however, it is unclear whether this heralds a shift away from racialization or merely extends flawed racial taxonomies to populations whose cultural and phenotypic diversity challenge traditional racial classification. We propose that ethnicity be conceptualized as a two-dimensional, context-specific, social construct with an attributional dimension that describes group characteristics (e.g., culture, nativity) and a relational dimension that indexes a group's location within a social hierarchy (e.g., minority vs. majority status). This new conceptualization extends prior definitions in ways that facilitate research on ethnicization, social stratification and health inequities. While federal ethnic and racial categories are useful for administrative purposes such as monitoring the inclusion of minorities in research, and traditional ethnicity concepts (e.g., culture) are useful for developing culturally appropriate interventions, our relational dimension of ethnicity is useful for studying the relationships between societal factors and health inequities. We offer this new conceptualization of ethnicity and outline next steps for employing socially meaningful measures of ethnicity in empirical research. As ethnicity is both increasingly complex and increasingly central to social life, improving its conceptualization and measurement is crucial for advancing research on ethnic health inequities.

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  1. Office of Management and Budget, 1997, Revisions to the standards for the classification of federal data on race and ethnicity, Federal Register, 62, 58781

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Metadata

Authors
Ford, C. L., & Harawa, N. T.
Affiliations
University of California, Los Angeles (US)
Corresponding author
Ford, Chandra L.
ORCID
Venue
Social Science & Medicine
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2010-07
Volume
71
Issue
2
Pages
251-258
ISSN
0277-9536 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.04.008
PMC
PMC2908006
OpenAlex
W2112277490
Cited by
263
References
74
Citations by year
2026: 14 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 37 · 2023: 29 · 2022: 30 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 14
FWCI
35.25
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
Locations
  • Social Science & Medicine (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • W. K. Kellogg Foundation Kellogg Health Scholars Program (P0117943)
  • Drew/UCLA Project EXPORT (5-P20-MD000182-05; 2 P20MD00182-06)
  • Center for the Advancement of Health
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Racial and Ethnic Identity Research
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Race, Genetics, and Society
  • Social Sciences › Health › Health disparities and outcomes
Keywords
ethnicity, ethnic identity, racial stratification, racialization, health disparities, social stratification, minority status, nativity, culture
MeSH terms
Culture, Ethnicity, Hierarchy, Social, Humans, Minority Groups, Terminology as Topic, Social Identification, United States, Racial Groups, Health Status Disparities

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