Ten Recommendations for Racially Categorizing Multiracial American Participants and Writing Race Demographic Questions in an Increasingly Diverse Society

ABSTRACT

Given that more than 1 in 10 Americans now fall into the two or more races category on the U.S. Census, this paper provides 10 recommendations to researchers for how to define the racial groups in their study, categorize Multiracial participants within their sample, and write race demographic questions that capture the diversity of the Multiracial American population. U.S. institutions have historically systematically excluded Multiracial Americans, or individuals with two or more racial backgrounds, influencing research practices to this day that effectively erase the unique experiences of Multiracial individuals. With the rapidly growing Multiracial population in the US, following these recommendations will help to advance science by supporting researchers in responsibly acknowledging Multiracial individuals among their samples. We discuss different options for categorizing Multiracial participants, including various ways to disaggregate this incredibly heterogeneous group, as well as present a variety of approaches to asking race demographic questions to capture distinctions between racial backgrounds and racial identity labels. Given that separating Multiracial participants into their own category has revealed disparities in health and other key variables, it is critical that researchers abandon practices such as reassigning Multiracial participants to monoracial or “other” groups to more accurately identify the needs of U.S. racial groups.