Development and validation of the index of race-related stress (IRRS)

This article describes the development and validation of a measure of the stress experienced by African Americans as a result of their daily encounters with racism and discrimination. The Index of Race-Related Stress (IRRS) is a 46-item instrument developed according to the theoretical framework of daily hassles (R. S. Lazarus & S. Folkman, 1984) and integrated with P. Essed's (1990) concept of everyday racism. The IRRS has adequate indexes of internal consistency and fair-to-adequate estimates of test-retest stability. Several subscales of the IRRS and a global racism index were correlated with other measures of stress and racism. Furthermore, the IRRS discriminated between Blacks and non-Blacks in a group-differences study. Both principal-components and confirmatory factor analyses supported a 4-component model of race-related stress.