Measurement Research on Minority Health and Health Disparities-Related Constructs

Council Date: February 5, 2019

Objectives

This initiative will support projects to advance the measurement and assessment of complex constructs relevant to minority health and health disparities.

Description of Initiative:

This initiative will support research to improve the measurement of complex social constructs that captures the lived experience of populations experiencing health disparities. The objective of this initiative is to produce knowledge that can inform the field about what kinds of measurement approaches may be most suitable for different health disparities-related research questions or specific populations, settings, or contexts. One area of specific interest is comparing comprehensive, granular assessments (e.g., assessing every dimension of a construct or every occurrence of a specific phenomenon) to more global, holistic assessments with respect to the usefulness of information that they produce, the usability of the data, resources required to analyze them, respondent acceptability and burden, and population relevance. Another area of interest is the measurement of relevant constructs across multiple levels (individual, interpersonal/family, community, and societal). Projects are encouraged to use multiple data sources across different levels. However, because this initiative emphasizes capturing the lived experiences of individuals and populations, all projects are expected to include data from self-report measures or data in some way.

Examples of potential study designs include but are not limited to the following:

• Examination of psychometric properties and/or patterns of findings with different measures of the same construct across existing studies or datasets
• Testing the performance of new or existing measures or measurement approaches within a single project
• Mixed methods approaches in which participants complete quantitative measures and provide their perspectives on the measures via cognitive interviews, focus groups, or other qualitative strategies
• Examination of measurement equivalence or invariance across health disparity and other populations
• Examination of ethical issues related to different measurement strategies, including potential risk and protection from individual or group harm from data collection or dissemination

Page updated Jan. 12, 2024