Quantitatively assessing perceptions of discrimination within Australia : a preliminary analysis of the perceived discrimination scale

![CDATA[In the past ten or so years, a portion of social psychological research examining the topic of prejudice and discrimination has moved away from the traditional focus of individuals who express such prejudicial values, and drifted more towards those who are the victim of discriminative behaviour and practices. The direction of this research, largely hampered by ethical and methodological concerns, has sought not to manipulate possible experiences of discrimination per se, but rather to assess an individual’s own perceptions of discrimination, and how such perceptions may impact on, as a stressor, various physiological (e.g. blood pressure) and psychological (e.g. self-esteem, coping) functioning. This paper reports on the rationale, development and preliminary investigation of the Perceived Discrimination Scale - a newly developed three-factor scale assessing perceptions of Individual, Institutional and Macro (e.g. government and media) based discrimination. It is hoped that the development of this scale will underpin advances in self research aiming to elucidate the relations between multiple forms of prejudice and other self constructs.]]