I see no problem with that.

Generally this looks good. It depends on the purpose of the study. If all of those categories include combinations, you will lose any sense of the makeup of each of those groups. Also, if this is for a federally-funded study, Hispanic/Latino needs to be separate (or you could also automatically label those who check only this box as also "White").

Perhaps use the latest Census rubric to determine categories. The US Census continues to "fine tune" the demographic categories it measures. Also, I notice you lack "Hawaiian/Pacific Islander". As it is now Ii think the categories you've created say a good deal about some of your assumptions (e.g. you equate/conflate African immigrants, African-Americans and people who are "black" from the Caribbean) which might complicate data interpretation.

William - Fortunately for you, others have already researched aspects of race and ethnicity before you. For example, living in Belfast, Northern Ireland (UK) every ten years there's a population census. This includes a question on ethnicity. You can call up the form used in the most recent UK census (2001) and see how we did it. If the US carries out population censuses - federally or on a state by state basis, there's another source for 'how someone else did it'. Hope this helps. Philip O'Keeffe PhD

Hi all, thanks for the comments! One of the reasons I am looking for input (here and elsewhere in the research community) is because of the limitations of the census demographic questions. On the US form there is no designation for Middle Eastern or Arab American--that detail is lost unless the participant writes it in the Other box. The UK form isn't appropriate for a study to be conducted in the US, as it doesn't list any Latino groups.

My goal is to ask participants about race and ethnicity without marginalizing any group, and while I do not doubt there IS an exemplar demographic questionnaire out there somewhere, the census forms don't quite meet the objective.

Hi there!

As one comment already pointed out, the purpose or hypothetical underpinnings of your thesis will generally determine the nature of attempts to survey populations. That said, almost all 'census'-type surveys and other popular methods for investigating this inarguably socially-constructed aspect of self consciousness assume the premises that they attempt to demonstrate.

If you would prefer to illustrate, along with whatever else you hope to show, the degree to which subjective, objective, societal, familial, etc. variables contribute to the ethnic and 'racial' elements of personal awareness, then you should start instead with more qualitative and open-ended questions. For instance, an inaugural inquiry might be something like this: "Please list up to five(or ten) attributes which contribute markedly to your sense of yourself; try to estimate the level of impact that any particular attribute has in making this self-assessment('1' being a weak effect, '5' being a very powerful effect)."

I have developed surveys such as this and administered them to small populations, with surprising results about the degree to which traditional or standard concepts of race and ethnicity are often imposed, rather than self-selected. The title of one of my essays is suggestive in this regard: "We're All Cousins After All."

William - I appreciate that UK materials may not help directly but your study can record that you examined these and eliminated them. Have you considered other research instruments? The 'standard' survey questionnaire, like all other instruments, is limited. I used Identity Structure Analysis (Weinreich and Saunderson, 2003) in my master's (2001) and doctoral (2010) research investigations into the change and development of 'sense of self' of individuals, including clinicians, left alive after the suicide death of someone with whom they had a significant relationship or emotional bond (sometimes the term suicide survivors is used). ISA is a relatively new research instrument that is capable of measuring, with precision, identity development in individuals in relation to life events and experiences. There is a website that you might like to have a look at

http://www.identityexploration.com/index.asp

I like Jim Hickey's mention of the 'socially constructed aspect of self consciousness' although I would go further and assert that there is no such thing as 'race' - best to drop use of the term and stick with 'ethnicity' which incorporates the meanings attributed to the word 'race' without its pejorative connotations. By the way I'm a human being born in Belfast. As for my 'race', I'm a member of the human race. My ethnicity is a consequence of Irish history and my life experiences. My ethnic identity therefore is a constantly changing matrix. All best. Philip O'Keeffe PhD

If I may be so bold, "Right fucking on Philip!"

How are we, as scientists, to add to the fund of human knowledge and wisdom without recognizing and deconstructing the falsity of the concept itself, at least as a biological matter? Inquiring minds would like to know.

I agree with Jim and Philip here. But don't let the lack of a scientific foundation of biological race obscure the fact that the concept of race and racial identity are very salient in many people's lives and society as a whole. I think we can all agree on that. As for problems with the term ethnicity, well, that has been written about extensively. From an anthropological perspective I'd suggest starting with F. Barth and T.H. Eriksen.

As for census data, there has been some excellent critical examinations of the problem of census categories.

Some qualitative methods I have used to investigate ethnic, national and larger regional identity (e.g. "Europe") include "Free Lists" and "Pile Sorts" (known by other names depending on discipline).

As for race, you might want to check out the American Anthropological Association's statements on race and the public outreach site ( www.aaanet.org/resources/a-public-education-program.cfm ).

Thanks Philip for suggesting ISA, I will look into that for a possible methodology in future work.

To me , the burning question is what is it you are researching. Do you need this information to explore ethnicity and race as ideas in people's lives and how they are individual and socially constructed, or is this just demographic information for a survey on another subject?

If it is the latter, I am not sure why you need a tick box alongside side free text, unless of course you are exploring the differences between the two choices. Why not just go with the free text and let people decide; why do you want a tick box too?

I agree with Phillip, race is such a loaded and political term, and it also has connotations of biological determinism, and I doubt this is what you are interested in here; people may well not be happy if they feel it is being used in the wrong way for the wrong reasons; Ethnicity - or perhaps even better "ethnic background," is more about people's social and cultural background(s) and I would suspect this is probably more what you are looking for and trying to capture.

I think it is also important though to consider that ethnic identity is not always fixed in time in people's lives, and so you need to consider that with respect to what else the survey is exploring. Ethnic identity is too often seen and categorised as essential and unchanging, decontextualised from time and place. And its obvious to see how many problems result from viewing identity as fixed. If you think of ethnic identity as more fluid as people move around an increasingly globalised world at different times in their life, then you need to also factor that into the survey, unless of course you are just interested in the very here and now.

Therefore, if you keep your tick box categories it is worth considering that your use of the word "or" does not capture this spatial and temporal dynamic.

A really good read on issues related to ethnic identity - its complexity, politics and dynamic nature, is the book "Multiculturalism" examining the politics of recognition by Charles Taylor (ed), Princeton University Press, New Jersey. It contains a series of excellent essays and is worth reading in terms of your background thinking about this subject, and defending what methods you eventually use and decide on for your survey. The final essay by K. Anthony Appiah is particularly engaging.

Good luck.

Ah, multiculturalism--the new stripes on the failed ideology of pluralism, itself an assertion without justification of the 'melting pot' defense of U.S. dominant thinking about color and class and power. As Steven May has pointed out, "over the years, multicultural education has promised much but delivered little."

To any student seeking a philosophical conceptualization of identity and consciousness, the question must begin with creating the dialogic and inquisitive space to discover how individuals conceive of themselves, both as individuals and in relation to specific others, groups of others, society, and more. The ISA materials seem to acknowledge the importance of such an openhanded approach. Certainly, the American Anthropological Association's statement on race, cited above, warns explicitly of imposing categories that have more to do with the imposing agenda than with a specific person's self-consciousness or group identification.

With a small sample of students from the Republic of Korea, this humble correspondent was able to develop evidence that 'racial' categories were less than potent in relation to identification with nation, class, and status. Half of respondents differentiated themselves, on their own, from their 'racial' cohorts North of the 49th parallel in North Korea. This would have been impossible to discern had anything akin to a standard 'survey of race and ethnicity' been the instrumentation for gathering knowledge.

If what Mr. Sommerville wants is to 'fit right in' with paradigms that are more about producing ideological conformity than they are about examining the nature of real consciousness, then he needn't worry about such matters as several folks here have brought up. However, if he considers himself as a contributor to knowledge as such--which of course in many views doesn't exist--he ought at least to ponder various radical critiques of using 'liberal,' multicultural, and like methodologies without permitting himself some critical distance from them.

Of particular use in this regard, should he want to consider alternatives, is a recent monograph by Toula Nicolacopoulos, "The Radical Critique of Liberalism: in Memory of a Vision." A recent search, to wit ' multiculturalism + "marxist critique" OR "radical critique" OR "materialist critique" + analysis,' yielded the cited volume and 20,000 other texts.

HI, note a crucial point: race is NOT ethnicity. Yes, the terminology points out similar schemes, yet it is different, see for example: http://www.differencebetween.net/science/nature/difference-between-ethnicity-and-race/

Ethnicity, not race, includes one's cultural heritage, "learning where you come from, and celebrating the traditions and ideas that are part of that region"

As a Cross-Cultural Psychologist, we include the following categories for ethnicity:

Please indicate your ethnicity (i.e. peoples’ ethnicity describes their feeling of belonging and attachment to a distinct group of a larger population that shares their ancestry, colour, language or religion):

_Caucasian

_Latino/Hispanic

_Middle Eastern

_African

_Caribbean

_South Asian

_East Asian

_Mixed

_Other

The strength of endorsement of one's ethnic identity can be measured with scales such as the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (http://www.personal.psu.edu/bjv3/page2/assets/MEIMIdentity06.pdf, see also Phinney and Ong, 2007)

hope this helps :)

It's a great point, Katharina. For my study I ended up using open-ended text boxes and assessing race and ethnicity separately. Some participants gave the same answer for both, but most gave different answers. The only downside to this approach was the need to code responses into discrete categories so I could do means comparisons between groups, but I put together a little coding team and we were able to reach consensus fairly quickly.

@William somerville: I like your approach, yet agree it can become tricky with the coding. As I am only interested in ethnicity and not race, I only include the question (and description) of ethnicity in my research. Yet, if both constructs are of importance for you, I think the open ended text box option was an adequate solution.

In order to collect the data you actually want in a way that is perceived as respectful by the participants, you will probably have to collect much more data than you are actually going to use.