In this article, the authors develop a brief questionnaire that assesses racist discrimination in the lives ofAfricanAmericans, and conduct preliminary studies with it. The Schedule of Racist Events (SRE) is an 18-item self-report inventory that assesses the frequency of racist discrimination (specific, stressful racist events) in the past year (recent racist events) and in one's entire life (lifetime racist events), and measures the extent to which this discrimination was evaluated (appraised) as stressful (appraised racist events). Results revealed that the SRE has extremely high internal consistency and split-half reliability. Racist discrimination is rampant in the lives of African Americans and is strongly related to psychiatric symptoms and to cigarette smoking. These findings highlight the negative consequences of racismandprovide evidencefor the validity of the SRE as a measure of (culturally specific) stress.

This paper presents the General Ethnic Discrimination Scale, an 18-item measure of perceived ethnic discrimination that can be used in health research with any ethnic group. The 1569 participants (half college students, half community adults) completed the General Ethnic Discrimination scale and measures of cigarette smoking and of psychiatric symptoms. Results revealed that the General Ethnic Discrimination subscales model the latent construct of perceived ethnic discrimination equally well for Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Whites. Discrimination was strongly related to psychiatric symptoms and to current cigarette smoking for ethnic minorities and Whites alike, but such relationships were stronger for ethnic minorities. Minorities who experienced frequent discrimination were 2.3 times more likely than their low-discrimination counterparts to be smokers. This 5th grade reading-level scale takes 10 min to complete and has sufficient, initial psychometric integrity for use in clinical and community health studies.

This paper describes the development, reliability, and validity of the Schedule of Sexist Events (SSE), a measure of lifetime and recent (past year) sexist discrimination in women's lives. A culturally diverse standardization sample of 631 women completed the 20‐item SSE. Factor analyses revealed that the SSE‐Lifetime and SSE‐Recent have four factors: Sexist Degradation, Sexism in Distant Relationships, Sexism in Close Relationships, and Sexist Discrimination in the Workplace. The SSE‐Lifetime and SSE‐Recent scales had high internal‐consistency (.92, .90) and split‐half (.87, .83) reliability, and the factors were similarly reliable. Validity was established by demonstrating that scores on the SSE‐Lifetime and SSE–Recent correlate as well with two other measures of stressful events (the Hassles Frequency and the PERI–Life Events scales [PERI–LES]) as those measures correlate with each other. Sexist discrimination (events) can be understood as gender‐specific, negative life events (stressors). Descriptive data indicated that sexist discrimination is rampant in women's lives. Additional analyses revealed significant status differences in experiencing sexist discrimination, with women of color reporting more sexism in their lives than White women. A brief theoretical model is presented along with suggestions for research on the impact of such discrimination on women's physical and mental health.

Although many researchers have suggested that racial discrimination has a negative impact on Black mental health, there are few empirical investigations of that possibility. The authors examined the relative contributions of racial discrimination, status variables, and ordinary stressors to symptoms among 520 Black adults. Results revealed that racial discrimination contributed significantly to symptoms and accounted for 15% of the variance in total symptoms. • racial discrimination • racism • psychiatric symptoms • BlacksNumerous studies have revealed widespread racial discrimination against Blacks (e.g.,

We tested the model that sexist discrimination, measured by the Schedule of Sexist Events (SSE), would account for additional variance in women's physical and psychiatric symptoms, above and beyond that accounted for by generic stressors. A series of hierarchical regression analyses, predicting symptoms on 10 different symptom outcome measures from generic stress and sexist stress (discrimination) were conducted, with the generic stressors entered on the first step and sexist discrimination on the second. Results revealed that sexist discrimination contributed significantly to the variance in women's symptoms, accounting for additional variance in those symptoms. Furthermore, sexist discrimination accounted for more of the variance than did generic stressors in premenstrual, depressive, obsessive‐compulsive, somatic, and total psychiatric and physical symptoms. These findings varied with the age and ethnicity of the women and with the symptom measure used, but nonetheless suggest that sexist discrimination plays a significant role in women's most prevalent symptoms.