How Collection of Racial Demographics Highlights or Hides Participants’ Multiraciality: An Illustrative Example and Warning for Social Scientists

Social scientists frequently rely on a single item to assess a participant's race, but this common practice can be misleading by obscuring the number of Multiracial participants in one’s sample. The current study reports descriptive statistics data from a multi-site sample of 688 diverse Multir...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Christophe, N. Keita (Author) ; Atkin, Annabelle L. (Author) ; Stein, Gabriela L. (Author) ; Lee, Richard M. (Author) ; Collaborative, LOVING Study (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2025
In: Race and social problems
Year: 2025, Volume: 17, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-11
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Keywords:
Ethnic–racial identity
Measurement
Demographics
Biracial
Multiracial
Description
Summary:Social scientists frequently rely on a single item to assess a participant's race, but this common practice can be misleading by obscuring the number of Multiracial participants in one’s sample. The current study reports descriptive statistics data from a multi-site sample of 688 diverse Multiracial college students (Mage = 21, range = 18–57, 73.1% female) to illustrate how different ways of collecting demographic information on race can shape researchers’ understanding and classification of Multiracial participants in their samples. Overall, 41.7% of participants in our sample would be classified differently (monoracial vs. Biracial vs. Multiracial) using participant-reported race compared to the race(s) of participants’ biological parents. We also find the proportion of Multiracial individuals that would be identified differently (e.g., put into a monoracial category vs. classified as Multiracial) differs based on various facets of Multiracial identity and several sociodemographic factors. Using self-reported versus parental race has substantial implications for how researchers classify and identify Multiracial participants in their samples.
ISSN:1867-1756
DOI:10.1007/s12552-024-09423-z