1 Teaching Supplement

 What is Intersectionality?  Intersectionality and Components of the Research Process  Implications for Practice 2

What is Intersectionality? 3

 Intersectional approaches entail: ◦ a consideration simultaneous membership in multiple social categories ◦ how power and inequality construct, reproduce, and sustain those categories  Objectives of intersectionality approaches: ◦ analysis of multiple intersecting social categories that are constructed by and within power relations ◦ to empower individuals and groups to transcend the constraints imposed upon them by those categories and the linked inequities 4

 The use of intersectional approaches in quantitative research can: ◦ Serve to develop the concept of intersectionality ◦ Enrich the discipline of psychological science  Need guidelines that consider how the experience and meaning of social categories are fostered, supported, and perpetuated by social inequalities 5

 Common assumptions of intersectionality: ◦ Recognition that all individuals are characterized simultaneously by multiple social categories which are intertwined such that the experience of each is linked to the others ◦ Embedded within each socially constructed category is an aspect of inequality or power ◦ Categories are properties of individuals as well as characteristics of social contexts inhabited by those individuals. Categories and their significance maybe fluid and dynamic 6  Essential elements of intersectional research: ◦ Attending to the experience and meaning of belonging to multiple social categories simultaneously ◦ Including an examination of power and inequality ◦ Attending to social categories as properties of the individual as well as the social context; considers those categories and their significance or salience as potentially fluid and dynamic

Intersectionality and Components of the Research Process 7

 There are six components of the psychological research process in which multiple methods may be used to implement intersectionality  Adaptation of intersectionality in as both a centrifugal process as well as a centripetal process (Cho, Crenshaw & McCall, 2013)  Description of methods is not exhaustive - other methods or techniques likely exist that could be used with an intersectional approach 8

 “Social categories” refers to the socially constructed variables of gender, race, class, sexual orientation etc.  “Groups” refer to groups within a social category such as women, men, African American persons, Asian American persons  “Location” is used when talking about groups of individuals belonging to multiple intersecting categories (e.g., gay men; Black women) 9

 As a critical theory intersectionality focuses on inequities tied to simultaneous membership in multiple social categories  Three questions to implement intersectionality (Cole, 2009): ◦ Who is included within this category ◦ What role does inequality play ◦ Where are the similarities 10

 Method A: Categories framed as person variables  Method B: Categories framed as stimulus variables  Intersectional approaches may be used with existing theories in psychology that attend to power and inequality 11

 Method A: Within-group focus to specify a particular intersectional location ◦ Within-group designs are less informative to understandings of intersecting categories because they exclude other relevant locations and cannot describe unique contributions of various categories challenging external validity and generalizability.  Method B: Between-group comparisons  Can combine within-and between-group designs so that variations in one category (e.g., ethnicity) are examined within the one group (e.g., lesbian women). 12

 Method A: stratified random sampling or “quota sampling” ◦ Tensions between statistical power and intersectional representation  Method B: purposive sampling 13

 Method A: Conceptual equivalence  Method B: Measurement invariance  Method C: Intersectional measurement  Many techniques described (e.g., between- groups comparison design) are complicated by the social construction of social categories and groups 14

 Method A: Multiple main effects reflecting the assessment of additive effects in an analysis of variance or multiple regression framework  Method B: Statistical interactions between two or more categories to assess multiplicative effects of multiple marginalities  Method C: Moderators in meta-analysis can be used to test hypotheses concerning the magnitude of an effect depending on another variable (i.e., statistical interaction; taps in to multiplicative effects)  Method D: Multilevel modeling to test how linkages differ among different groups within multiple levels  Method E: Moderated mediation to investigate the intersections  Method F: Person-centered methods like latent class analysis to identify commonalities across intersectional locations 15

 Method A: Attention to power and inequality by examining how power and inequality construct the experience or meaning of being a member of multiple social categories 16

Implications for Practice 17

 Two broad categories of implications for evidence based practice: ◦ Using an intersectional approach in practice by recognizing the nature of participant’s identities and experiences ◦ Enabling practitioners to be sophisticated consumers of intersectional research 18