One big question for health researchers is how to measure structural racism in different places and systems. Learn more about why epidemiologist pbaJackson advocates for a “mixed-methods” approach.
while unfairly advantaging persons racialized as white. Such a system was historically meant to create white privilege and cannot be disentangled from the foundations of European colonization. I’m a Black woman raised by Salvadorians in south Los Angeles, and I remember asking my mom why our neighborhood had a curfew during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. No one really talked to me about what racism meant.
Q: To study structural racism, you advocate for a “mixed-methods” approach. What exactly are these mixed methods and what do they add? Mixed methods is using qualitative tools—like interviews and focus groups—and marrying them with quantitative methods—such as a survey that allows you to ask a very specific question and have a very specific, finite answer—that we then can translate into a number.
People like to use quantitative methods because they like to look at large-scale findings. But those methods can be limited … [and have] bias.