Inter-observer agreement on subjects' race and race-informative characteristics.

ABSTRACT: Health and socioeconomic disparities tend to be experienced along racial and ethnic lines, but investigators are not sure how individuals are assigned to groups, or how consistent this process is. To address these issues, 1,919 orthodontic patient records were examined by at least two observers who estimated each individual's race and the characteristics that influenced each estimate. Agreement regarding race is high for African and European Americans, but not as high for Asian, Hispanic, and Native Americans. The indicator observers most often agreed upon as important in estimating group membership is name, especially for Asian and Hispanic Americans. The observers, who were almost all European American, most often agreed that skin color is an important indicator of race only when they al

SUBMITTER: Edgar HJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3163683 | biostudies-literature | 2011

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature