title: The Australian Racism, Acceptance, and Cultural-Ethnocentrism Scale (RACES): item response theory findings.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Racism and associated discrimination are pervasive and persistent challenges with multiple cumulative deleterious effects contributing to inequities in various health outcomes. Globally, research over the past decade has shown consistent associations between racism and negative health concerns. Such research confirms that race endures as one of the strongest predictors of poor health. Due to the lack of validated Australian measures of racist attitudes, RACES (Racism, Acceptance, and Cultural-Ethnocentrism Scale) was developed.
  
  
  METHODS
  Here, we examine RACES' psychometric properties, including the latent structure, utilising Item Response Theory (IRT). Unidimensional and Multidimensional Rating Scale Model (RSM) Rasch analyses were utilised with 296 Victorian primary school students and 182 adolescents and 220 adults from the Australian community.
  
  
  RESULTS
  RACES was demonstrated to be a robust 24-item three-dimensional scale of Accepting Attitudes (12 items), Racist Attitudes (8 items), and Ethnocentric Attitudes (4 items). RSM Rasch analyses provide strong support for the instrument as a robust measure of racist attitudes in the Australian context, and for the overall factorial and construct validity of RACES across primary school children, adolescents, and adults.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  RACES provides a reliable and valid measure that can be utilised across the lifespan to evaluate attitudes towards all racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious groups. A core function of RACES is to assess the effectiveness of interventions to reduce community levels of racism and in turn inequities in health outcomes within Australia.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University, Building 17, Clayton Campus, Wellington Road, Melbourne, VIC, 3800, Australia. kaine.grigg@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Kaine
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Grigg
authors.affiliation: School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University, Building 17, Clayton Campus, Wellington Road, Melbourne, VIC, 3800, Australia.|School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
authors.forename: Lenore
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Manderson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001290:Attitude / Q000208:ethnology*; D001315:Australia / Q000208:ethnology; D002648:Child; D005006:Ethnicity; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics; D063505:Racism / Q000639:trends*; D012574:Schools / Q000639:trends; D057566:Self Report / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D063508:Social Discrimination / Q000639:trends*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Australia; Item Response Theory; Racism; Rasch analysis; Scale