Development and validation of the Index of Race-Related Stress (IRRS).
1996/10/01 by Shawn O. Utsey, Joseph G. Ponterotto · 338 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Applied psychology #Clinical psychology #Computer science #Early Childhood Education and Development #Gender studies #Index (typography) #Psychology #Psychometrics #Race (biology) #Racial and Ethnic Identity Research #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Social psychology #Sociology #Stress (linguistics) #Test validity
paper · doi:10.1037/0022-0167.43.4.490
published in Journal of Counseling Psychology 43(4), 490-501 (American Psychological Association)
openalex publication_date 1996/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26
Abstract
This article describes the development and validation of a measure of the stress experienced by African Americans as a result of their daily encounters with racism and discrimination. The Index of Race-Related Stress (IRRS) is a 46-item instrument developed according to the theoretical framework of daily hassles (R. S. Lazarus & S. Folkman, 1984) and integrated with P. Essed's (1990) concept of everyday racism. The IRRS has adequate indexes of internal consistency and fair-to-adequate estimates of test-retest stability. Several subscales of the IRRS and a global racism index were correlated with other measures of stress and racism. Furthermore, the IRRS discriminated between Blacks and non-Blacks in a group-differences study. Both principal-components and confirmatory factor analyses supported a 4-component model of race-related stress.
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