A good example of this is the mismatch between self-selected race (which is used in most data sets) and the observer-selected race that is often used for death certificates. Such seemingly trivial differences in measurement lead to different distributions of responses about racial and ethnic identity ( Hirschman, Alba, and Farley, 2000).Īnother inconsistency that has troubled health researchers is the collection of racial and ethnic data using different criteria across data sources. Although most national and many local data collection efforts follow the federal guidelines, they vary in the way in which questions are constructed and in the order in which they appear in the questionnaire or interview schedule. This resulted in several significant changes, including the most well-known change, which allowed individuals to choose more than one racial category in the 2000 Census. Several advocacy groups pressured the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to revise its racial and ethnic categories and data collection schemes (see Farley, 2001, and Rodriguez, 2000, for discussions of the controversies). The debate over racial and ethnic categories prior to the 2000 Census is one of the most recent, but by no means the only, example of these contests. Race and ethnicity are words that carry heavy intellectual and political baggage, and issues surrounding racial and ethnic identities are often contested within and across groups. Part of this variation is from inconsistency in the way that Americans think and talk about race and ethnicity. Once we begin to explore more deeply the ways in which data on the elderly population are collected, however, we discover inconsistency across data sets and time. Most researchers generally agree that these categories are primarily social constructions that have changed and will continue to change over time.
To the extent possible, recent research has attempted to identify and compare subgroups within each of the major racial and ethnic groups, making distinctions by country of origin, nativity, and generation within the United States. Most Americans and nearly all researchers are also aware that these general categories disguise significant heterogeneity within each of these major groups. Most Americans and most researchers have in mind a general categorical scheme that includes whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and American Indians. At one level there is a good deal of consistency in data collection. Our picture of racial and ethnic disparities in the health of older Americans is strongly influenced by the methods of collecting data on race and ethnicity.