Perceived discrimination and indigenous Australian students' school related attitudes

In the formulation and analysis of the recently developed Personal/Group Discrimination Scale (PGDS), Bodkin-Andrews, Craven, Marsh and Martin (2005) identified a strong perceived discrimination scale that accurately assessed subjective perceptions of discrimination targeting the individual and discrimination emanating from the wider Australian community. Considering the original analysis was limited to a multicultural sample of first year psychology students, concerns for the cultural validity and generalisability of these results were rightly raised. As a result, this paper extends on the original findings of Bodkin-Andrews et al. by applying the PGDS to a strong sample of Indigenous secondary students. In addition to this, what relations perceived discrimination may hold with a number of important academic outcome variables will also be assessed. The results indicate that perceived discrimination is an important construct whose structure and impact must be understood for Indigenous students if equitable school outcomes are to be achieved.