An important priority in the future assessment of perceived discrimination is to assess markers of the stressfulness of experiences. A central problem in the assessment of stress is what Dohrenwend (2006) calls “intracategory variability.” That is, the categories on life events scales are typically so broad (death of a loved, unemployment, or serious illness or injury) that they capture experiences that can vary in their stressfulness and impact. Knowing that such an event occurs provides no information on how negative, unexpected, and undesirable, the event was. The same is true for measures of discrimination in employment, housing or in interaction with the police. Researchers studying discrimination should devote more attention to assessing the severity of discriminatory incidents by capturing the number, intensity, and duration of these experiences (Carter 2007).
