Validation of the Perceptions of Racism in Children and Youth (PRaCY) Scale in Pittsburgh: Associations with Sexual Violence Experiences

Background

Racism is a public health crisis impacting the health and wellbeing of adolescents. Finding valid tools to measure race-based discrimination, a form of racism, is necessary to accurately assess the effectiveness of programs aimed to reduce those experiences.

Objectives

Our objective was to evaluate measurement invariance of a race-based discrimination scale by gender among a sample of youth (ages 13–19) from historically marginalized groups and to assess associations of race-based discrimination with sexual violence victimization and perpetration.

Methods

We used pooled cross-sectional baseline data from two sexual violence prevention programs from 2015 to 2019. Male and female participants were from Manhood 2.0 (a cluster randomized trial) and Sisterhood 2.0 (a quasi-experimental study), respectively. All participants were recruited through community organizations from the same neighborhoods. In this study, we included all non-white youth with completed responses to the 10-item Perceptions of Racism in Children and Youth (PRaCY) Scale. This study was approved by the University of Pittsburgh IRB.

Results

We conducted confirmatory factor analysis (N = 749) and measurement invariance among male-identifying (n = 560) and female-identifying (n = 189) participants resulting in a unidimensional factor structure with weak factorial invariance by gender. Lifetime discriminatory experiences were common among all participants. Mean discrimination scores were associated with a significant increase in the odds of lifetime sexual violence victimization in males (OR = 3.03, 95%CI 1.43–6.42) and females (OR = 10.80, 95% CI 2.23–52.33), respectively.

Conclusion

We confirmed construct validity of the PRaCY Scale among youth experiencing marginalization and found associations between experiences of discrimination and sexual violence victimization in both boys and girls.