Advances in Skin Color Measurement: Reliability, Validity, and Feasibility of Portable Devices for Field Research in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences

本研究项目将促进肤色测量在调查实地研究中的知识。肤色是衡量种族和民族的常用标准。采访者编码的肤色在现场很容易收集，但研究人员使用粗糙和主观的分类。用于皮肤颜色客观物理测量的手持式仪器具有增加可重复性和精度的优点，但在社会和行为科学中的采用受到限制。该项目将确定新一代便携式颜色测量设备是否在实际可行和科学合理的情况下用于大规模实地调查研究中测量人类肤色。研究人员还将寻求更好地了解皮肤颜色的物理测量与采访者编码的皮肤颜色量表的比较。本科生和研究生将参与整个项目。研究结果不仅将传播给其他学者和教师，还将传播给政策制定者、从业者和更广泛的公众。该研究项目将开展必要的实证和转化工作，将肤色测量工具广泛应用于社会、行为和经济科学领域。尽管手持设备已广泛应用于医学和体质人类学的一些领域，但测量方案的标准化程度不一，在其他领域的采用很少。本项目将评估手持式测量设备以及自评和访谈者评定的肤色分类量表的可靠性；建立与社会、行为和学术成果相关的有效性；并评估每种方法的可行性。研究人群将包括来自广泛种族和民族背景的个人，从该国最多元化的大学之一的数据收集站点中提取。将编制关于实地研究肤色测量方法的具体指导，以及成本信息、技术建议、模板研究方案和预算表。通过生成这些资源，该项目将提高内部和外部肤色数据的有效性，促进跨样本和跨队列比较。研究人员将确定传统肤色等级量表的优势和局限性，这些量表主要评估从浅到暗的单一维度，并提供证据，证明需要纳入潜在色调（如红色和黄色）的测量，以更好地与当代多方面和流动的种族概念保持一致。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This research project will advance knowledge of the measurement of skin color in survey field research. Skin color is a frequently used measure of race and ethnicity. Interviewer-coded skin color is simple to collect in the field, but researchers use coarse and subjective categories. Handheld instruments for objective physical measurements of skin color have advantages of increased replicability and precision, but adoption in the social and behavioral sciences has been limited. This project will determine whether a new generation of portable devices for color measurement are practically feasible and scientifically sound for use in measuring human skin tone in large-scale field-based survey research. The investigators also will seek to better understand how physical measures of skin color compare to interviewer-coded skin color scales. Undergraduate and graduate students will be involved throughout the project. Results will be disseminated not only to other scholars and teachers, but also to policymakers, practitioners, and the broader public.This research project will conduct the empirical and translational work necessary to bring tools for measurement of skin color into broad use in field settings in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. Although handheld devices have been widely used in some fields of medicine and physical anthropology, there is varying standardization of measurement protocol and little adoption in other fields. This project will evaluate the reliability of handheld measurement devices and of self- and interviewer-rated categorical scales of skin color; establish their validity in relation to social, behavioral, and academic outcomes; and assess the feasibility of each approach. The study population will include individuals from a wide range of racial and ethnic backgrounds, drawing from a data collection site at one of the most diverse universities in the country. Specific guidance regarding methods of skin color measurement for field-based studies will be produced, along with cost information, technical recommendations, and template research protocols and budget sheets. By generating these resources, the project will improve both internal and external validity of skin color data, facilitating cross-sample and cross-cohort comparisons. The investigators will identify the strengths and limitations of conventional skin color rating scales that primarily assess a single dimension of lightness-to-darkness, providing evidence of the need to incorporate measures of undertones (such as redness and yellowness) to better align with contemporary multifaceted and fluid conceptions of race-ethnicity.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.