Indirect Measurement of Intersectionality Using Data from the Understand America Study

Indirect Measurement of Intersectionality Using Data from the Understand America Study

Chard, Richard E.; Rogofsky, David; Jefferies, Cherice; Perez-Arce, Francisco

Journal paper

Social Security Bulletin

2024

This article introduces a quantitative measure of intersectionality. Intersectionality is the examination of an individual's overlapping identities--for example, one's sex and race and ethnicity--and the relative privileges or barriers that a society perceives for or attaches to a given intersectional identity. We use data from the Understanding America Study (UAS) to construct a Sociopolitical Power Scale (SPPS) that measures societal perceptions of relative power among intersectional identities, and we test whether perceptions of intersectional identities differ from those of single-characteristic identities. UAS questions cover relative political and societal power between men and women and between racial and ethnic groups but not between intersectional identities. We therefore explore differences between men and women in the SPPS within racial and ethnic groups and racial and ethnic differences in the SPPS between men and women. We find some significant differences between intersectional and single-characteristic identities.