Page 57 - The Importance of Common Metrics for Advacing Social Science Theory and Research

The Importance of Common Metrics for Advancing Social Science Theory and Research: A Workshop Summary
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INDICATORS 45

among agencies and causing obstacles regarding implementing cat-
egories for different uses, including education.
• The five race categories of the original and revised versions of Di-
rective No. 15 have been found not meaningful to a sizable number
of Hispanics.

In 2007, the U.S. Department of Education issued new guidance and a
simplified set of categories in which all persons identified as Hispanic, re-
gardless of their race, are counted simply as “Hispanic.” The five original
single race categories of the revised version of Directive No. 15 are retained
and persons reporting two or more races are categorized as “two or more
races.” One of the flaws of this system is that about 14 percent of the total
American Indian population claim Hispanic origin, but this is not reported;
Cubans and Puerto Ricans of African descent are also not identified. This
system, in fact, undermines the comparability of data with data from agen-
cies adhering to the 1997 standard, such as the Census Bureau.

Measuring Race: Outstanding Considerations
While the validity and reliability of data for race and ethnicity receive
relatively little attention in the literature, Snipp observed that questions
about this topic are becoming increasingly inescapable. Current thinking
regarding reliability, for example, demonstrates that racial data are more
fluid and dynamic than believed in the past. In addition, instability in the
reporting of race, once viewed as a result of random fluctuations arising
from poorly created instruments, can be systematically modeled and there-
fore merits further inquiry as an object of social scientific research.
In terms of validity, Snipp underscored two considerations: (1) some
concordance of understanding about the meaning of race must exist be-
tween the researcher and the research subject and (2) there is no ability
to determine entitlement to a particular heritage. Other challenges facing
researchers include

• Ensuring content validity, including determining whether the race-
specific categories under consideration are the correct ones and
whether there is sufficient sample size to yield reliable estimates for
smaller populations.
• Whether complex content entailed by the idea of race is compre-
hensively measured by one or more items on a survey questionnaire
or interview schedule.
• The ability of respondents, particularly those of mixed racial heri-
tage, to ignore instructions and choose to identify with a race that
best reflects their own understanding of “race.”

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