Inter-Observer Agreement on Subjects' Race and Race-Informative Characteristics

Health and socioeconomic disparities tend to be experienced along racial and ethnic lines, but investigators are not sure how individuals are assigned to groups, or how consistent this process is. To address these issues, 1,919 orthodontic patient records were examined by at least two observers who estimated each individual's race and the characteristics that influenced each estimate. Agreement regarding race is high for African and European Americans, but not as high for Asian, Hispanic, and Native Americans. The indicator observers most often agreed upon as important in estimating group membership is name, especially for Asian and Hispanic Americans. The observers, who were almost all European American, most often agreed that skin color is an important indicator of race only when they also agreed the subject was European American. This suggests that in a diverse community, light skin color is associated with a particular group, while a range of darker shades can be associated with members of any other group. This research supports comparable studies showing that race estimations in medical records are likely reliable for African and European Americans, but are less so for other groups. Further, these results show that skin color is not consistently the primary indicator of an individual's race, but that other characteristics such as facial features add significant information.

种族与族裔差异往往会造成健康及社会经济层面的不平等，但研究人员目前尚未明确个体被划分至各类群体的具体机制，也不清楚该划分过程是否具备一致性。为解决上述问题，研究团队对1919份正畸患者病历开展分析，由至少两名评估者独立判定每名患者的种族，并记录下影响自身判定结果的各项特征。评估者间对于种族判定的一致性在非裔与欧裔美国人群体中较高，但在亚裔、西班牙裔及美洲原住民群体中则相对较低。评估者们普遍认为，在判定群体归属时，姓名是最为重要的特征，这一点在亚裔与西班牙裔美国人群体中尤为突出。参与本次评估的人员几乎均为欧裔美国人，他们仅在一致认定研究对象为欧裔美国人时，才会将肤色视为判定种族的重要依据。这一结果表明，在多元社区环境中，浅肤色往往与特定群体绑定，而深浅各异的深肤色则可能与其他任何群体的成员相关联。本研究与同类研究结论一致，均表明医疗记录中的种族判定对于非裔与欧裔美国人而言具备可靠性，但对于其他群体则可靠性较低。此外，本次研究结果还显示，肤色并非始终是判定个体种族的首要依据，面部特征等其他特征能够提供更为关键的补充信息。