Journal of Counseling Psychology 1996, Vol. 43, No. 4, 490-501 Copyright 1996 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-0167/96/S3.00 Development and Validation of the Index of Race-Related Stress (IRRS) Shawn O. Utsey and Joseph G. Ponterotto Fordham University at Lincoln Center 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. Racism and acts of discrimination against African Amer- icans have taken on various forms over the past 350 years, ranging from lynchings, burnings, beatings, and other forms of direct violence to more subtle slights and innuendoes (Duckitt, 1992; Ponterotto & Pederson, 1993; Thompson, Neville, Weathers, Poston, & Atkinson, 1990). There have been several scholarly works of historical significance ex- amining the nature of racism and discrimination in relation to the experiences of African Americans in the United States (e.g., Allport, 1954; Dovidio & Gaertner, 1986; Duc- kitt, 1992; Essed, 1990; Myrdal, 1944; Jones, 1972; Petti- grew, 1964; Simpson & Yinger, 1985). For the most part, racism has been of interest primarily to social psychologists who study the development and expression of prejudice and in-group/out-group attitudes, or sociologists who are pri- marily concerned with the outcome effects of racism and discrimination on groups of people within society. How- ever, psychologists have more recently begun to examine the clinical significance of racism and its relationship to the psychological well-being of African Americans who expe- rience it as a chronic stressor in their daily lives (see Burke, 1984; Fernando, 1984; Jackson, Williams, & Torres, 1995; McNeilly et al., in press; Smith, 1985; White & Parham, 1990). Despite some perceived progress made in U.S. race rela- tions over the last three decades, many writers believe that for African Americans, racism continues to be an inescap- able and painful reality of daily life (Essed, 1990; Feagin & Shawn O. Utsey and Joseph G. Ponterotto, Psychological and Educational Services, Fordham University at Lincoln Center. We gratefully acknowledge Dorinda Trader, Pat Vincent, Reginald Gougis, Lisa Whitten, and the many others who assisted with data collection, and Khayriyyah Abdul-Lateef for her excel- lent editorial work on several drafts of this article. We also thank James S. Jackson, Francis Terrell, and Shelly Harrell for their assistance in locating relevant literature. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Shawn O. Utsey, who is now at 214-37 36th Avenue, Bayside, New York 11361. Electronic mail may be sent via Internet to utsey @ mary.fordham.edu. Sikes, 1994; McNeilly et al., in press). Essed (1990), in her groundbreaking qualitative study of the daily experiences of Blacks with racism, described the chronic nature of the stress associated with racism this way: "to live with the threat of racism means planning, almost everyday of one's life, how to avoid or defend oneself against discrimination" (p. 260). The experience of racism for African Americans is cumulative, whereby new encounters are interpreted on the basis of past experiences with racism, knowledge of others' experience with racism, and knowledge about the systemic nature of racism (Essed, 1990; Feagin & Sikes, 1994). According to Dovidio and Gaetner (1986) racism is em- bedded in the "social norms, institutional policies, and cog- nitive and affective systems of White Americans" (p. xi) and as a result has a significant adverse impact on the quality of life for African Americans. Racism can occur in three spheres: (a) individual racism, experienced on a per- sonal level; (b) institutional racism, experienced as a result of racism being embedded in the policies of a given insti- tution; and (c) cultural racism, results from the cultural practices of one group being lauded as superior to those of another (Essed, 1990; Jones, 1972). Essed (1990) extended the individual realm of racism to include collective racism. Collective racism occurs when organized (or semiorga- nized) Whites/non-Blacks seek to restrict the rights of Blacks (e.g., when a Black family moves into a White community and is met with open hostility by its new neigh- bors). Because of the omnipresence of racism, it makes intuitive sense that any effort to study its impact on African Americans would focus on the multidimensional character of its expression and experience. Due to the insidiousness of everyday racism, empirical examination of this construct can be an arduous task. Con- sequently, past research has generally focused on examining the most overt acts of racism experienced by African Amer- icans. However, the racism experienced by African Amer- icans throughout the day—whether at work, in public places, in route to and from their homes, or on television and other popular media outlets—for the most part has remained unexamined (Essed, 1990). The greatest challenge 490 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.