Prejudice as stress: Conceptual and measurement problems
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In the field of social sciences, there has been a renewed interest in studying prejudice and discrimination as stressors and assessing their impact on various health outcomes. This raises a need for theoretically based and psychometrically sound measures of prejudice. As researchers approach this task, there are several conceptual issues that need to be addressed. The author describes 3 such issues related to (1) individual versus structural measures of the impact of prejudice, (2) objective versus subjective assessments of stress, and (3) measures of major events versus everyday discrimination. How researchers approach the problem of measurement depends on the specific study aims, but they must consider these conceptual issues and understand the advantages and limitations of various approaches to the study of prejudice as stress.
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High rates of depressive symptoms among LGBTQ people are attributed to the social stigma and stress directed at this population.
“High rates of depressive symptoms among LGBTQ people are attributed to the social stigma and stress directed at this population [18,19,20,21].”
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- Authors
- Meyer, I. H.
- Affiliations
- Columbia University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Meyer, Ilan H.
- ORCID
- Meyer, Ilan H.
- Venue
- American Journal of Public Health
- Publisher
- American Public Health Association
- Published
- 2003-02
- Volume
- 93
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 262-265
- ISSN
- 0090-0036 (ISSN-L)
- 1541-0048
- PMC
- PMC1447727
- OpenAlex
- W2167632036
- Cited by
- 504
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 30 · 2023: 28 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 36 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 34 · 2018: 36 · 2017: 27 · 2016: 31 · 2015: 25 · 2014: 25 · 2013: 24 · 2012: 19
- FWCI
- 36.45
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- American Journal of Public Health (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- American Psychological Association
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH059627, MH59627)
- U.S. National Library of Medicine (G13LM007660)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Racial and Ethnic Identity Research
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Health › Health disparities and outcomes
- Keywords
- prejudice, discrimination, stress, health outcomes, psychometric assessment
- MeSH terms
- Classification, Ethnicity, Evaluation Studies as Topic, Health Status, Humans, Mental Health, Prejudice, Psychometrics, Risk Factors, Stress, Psychological
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