title: A new audience segmentation tool for African Americans: the black identity classification scale.
abstract: Many health communications target African Americans in an attempt to remediate race-based health disparities. Such materials often assume that African Americans are culturally homogeneous; however, research indicates that African Americans are heterogeneous in their attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs. The Black Identity Classification Scale (BICS) was designed as a telephone-administered tool to segment African American audiences into 16 ethnic identity types. The BICS was pretested using focus groups, telephone pretests, and a pilot study (n = 306). The final scale then was administered to 625 Black adults participating in a dietary intervention study, where it generally demonstrated good internal consistency reliability. The construct validity of the BICS also was explored by comparing participants' responses to culturally associated survey items. The distribution of the 16 BICS identity types in the intervention study is presented, as well as select characteristics for participants with core identity components. Although additional research is warranted, these findings suggest that the BICS has good psychometric properties and may be an effective tool for identifying African American audience segments.
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Health Sciences, University of Michigan School of Public Health, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2029, USA. reda@umich.edu
authors.forename: Rachel E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Davis
authors.forename: Gwen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Alexander
authors.forename: Josephine
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Calvi
authors.forename: Cheryl
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wiese
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Greene
authors.forename: Mike
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nowak
authors.forename: William E
authors.initials: WE
authors.lastname: Cross
authors.forename: Ken
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Resnicow
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000145:classification*; D000368:Aged; D003469:Culture; D003625:Data Collection; D004032:Diet / Q000208:ethnology; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012933:Social Identification; D013689:Telephone; D014481:United States; D055815:Young Adult