![]() ![]() The government has also been blamed for “bureaucratic failures” during the hurricane, wherein low-income African American citizens were put at heightened risk due to a strict adherence to rules and lack of use of discretion that would assist them ( Molotch, 2006). Research has shown that African Americans were less likely than Whites to have an evacuation plan in place prior to the hurricane ( Spence, Lachlan, & Griffin, 2007), and were less likely to have evacuated during the storm ( Elliot & Pais, 2006). Evacuation policies relied on private means of transportation that were less available to African Americans ( Lavelle & Feagin, 2006). For example, the city government failed to repair the levees surrounding the low-income African American community despite warnings of their fragility ( Park & Miller, 2006). The disproportionate impact of Hurricane Katrina on low-income African Americans seems to be due, at least in part, to the interaction of racial and class injustices in pre-hurricane policies, as well as in the treatment of victims during the hurricane and its aftermath. African American communities were damaged more than White communities ( Logan, 2006), and African Americans affected by the storm have since reported higher rates of unemployment, psychological distress, and general life disruption than Whites ( Elliot & Pais, 2006 White, Philpot, Wylie, & McGowen, 2007). The hurricane and its aftermath had a major impact on vulnerable populations in New Orleans, particularly low-income African Americans. Hurricane Katrina struck the New Orleans area on August 29, 2005, and was the worst hurricane in recent United States history ( Knabb, Rhome, & Brown, 2006). We investigated whether interviewer race impacted respondents’ assessments of the role of racism during the hurricane and its aftermath, paying specific attention to the quality of the language used within their responses. African American) by examining responses to questions about the role of racism during Hurricane Katrina among 41 low-income African American female hurricane survivors. In this study we explored the impact of interviewer race (White vs. The lack of attention to the effects of interviewer race is a significant oversight, given that both quantitative and qualitative researchers frequently use interviewers to collect data. Of the 51 results, only eight were empirical studies drawing on qualitative interview data (as opposed to survey, test, or other data collected via interview methods), and only four of those eight were published in psychology journals (the remainder were published in interdisciplinary social science journals, primarily in Public Opinion Quarterly). For example, a PsycINFO database search (conducted in December 2010) using the search terms “interviewer race,” “race of the interviewer,” “interviewer ethnicity” and “ethnicity of the interviewer,” as well as identical searches using the terms “researcher,” “investigator” and “experimenter” in place of “interviewer,” resulted in only 51 journal articles. In particular, there has been little attention given to the effect of interviewer race on data. Despite the pervasiveness of racism in American society, mainstream psychology researchers have not fully considered its potential impact on research findings.
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