The Prevalence and Persistence of Ethnic and Racial Harassment and its Impact on Health: A Longitudinal Analysis

Survey research of ethnic minorities in the 1960s brought the reality of ethnic and racial discrimination to the forefront of the national debate, playing a key role in anti-discrimination legislation in 1968. Despite legislation, ethnic and racial discrimination and harassment continues to be a feature of British Society, although this has declined against some groups and intensified against others. Not only does this violate the principle of a fair and equal society, it also has palpable adverse impacts on health, particularly mental health. The last comprehensive evidence of harassment was collected in 1994 and since then there is little statistical evidence about the prevalence of harassment and its impact on the health of ethnic minorities in Britain.

This research uses a new, large-scale data source, Understanding Society, on minorities in Britain to investigate the current prevalence and type of ethnic harassment and its relationship to mental health and health behaviours such as smoking, drinking and physical activity. Since 2009, Understanding Society has been interviewing around 51,000 adults, including 10,000 ethnic minorities. The large sample size of the Understanding Society database allows us to look at who experiences harassment, where harassment is most likely, and what kind of harassment is most common. For instance, we will investigate how gender, age and education level intersect to produce particular vulnerabilities to both verbal and physical abuse as well as avoidance or feeling unsafe. We will determine in which locations people are more likely to experience harassment: in the street, on public transport, at the workplace? How might these differ in areas of low or high ethnic concentration? Because Understanding Society asks the same individuals about harassment repeatedly over time, we can examine not only one off experiences but also find to what extent people report persistent harassment.

After establishing new benchmark estimates of harassment in the UK, we will go on to test for the impact of harassment on mental health and health behaviours. It is well known that those who experience harassment are more likely to have poor mental health, and that those stressed by harassment may turn to unhealthy coping behaviours such as drinking or tobacco use. However, it is difficult to establish causality, because individuals who experience harassment may also have personality traits or underlying proclivities which also lead them to have poor mental health or worse health behaviours. Fortunately, Understanding Society will enable us to establish time-order reasoning and to use statistical techniques which allow us to better establish causality in these relationships. Moreover, we can also investigate to which extent family relationships, friendships, presence of others of the same ethnic group in the neighbourhood and sense of belonging and identity protects minorities experiencing harassment from worsening mental health and health behaviours. Having repeated observations across time also enables us to examine whether any negative effects of harassment dissipate over time or if repeated experiences are more stressful than one off incidences.

This research will have direct relevance to those who work with minority communities such as local governments and local services, as well as policy makers concerned with health and health equality. To make best use of the research we will meet frequently with a policy-orientated advisory group who will help refine our research questions and disseminate our findings to those governmental and third party organisations that will benefit from it, and develop a platform for research co-production to support a better, shared understanding.

This research will directly benefit all government departments concerned with racism, but in particular the current lead agencies, namely the Government Equalities Office, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Department of Communities & Local Government. We will provide the first representative estimates of the prevalence of different forms of ethnic and racial harassment, which can be used to benchmark progress in anti-discrimination and inclusion policies in the past 25 years. Establishing different probabilities of harassment across individuals of different characteristics and residing in different areas will enable targeted interventions towards those most vulnerable to harassment. Local level information will be of particular interest to the DCLG.

The research will also directly benefit policy makers and third sector organisations concerned with health and ethnic inequalities and reducing and eliminating harassment and discrimination. More closely establishing the causal effects of harassment will inform health policy targeted towards minority communities of their particular challenges. Exploring variation in the effect of harassment on mental health, for instance through moderating effects such as age, sex, or social network composition, this research will identify potential sources of resilience to harassment. Disseminating new information on such sources of resilience will help inform policy makers of interventions that can protect those most vulnerable. These findings will also enable third party organisations serving minority communities, such as the Race Equality Forum, the Equality and Diversity Forum, the Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum, and the Quest for Economic Development (QED), to better target clients most in need. To ensure that our research reaches these targets, we have commitments from all of the third party organisations mentioned above (see also Pathways to Impact) to serve on our dedicated Advisory Group. The AG will be involved in co-production by participating in every stage of the project, its efforts culminating in the organisation of an open general dissemination workshop as well as a more targeted "closed conversation" event to distil the most important policy messages.

We anticipate that our research will achieve impact by informing the general public. Racial and ethnic harassment, discrimination and inequality are core topics in British political debates. It is thus important for the British public to be aware of current challenges facing minority members, and be well informed by quality estimates of the prevalence of the problem and its impact on health.

In general, the findings of this project will contribute to the discussion surrounding the need for and implementation of anti-discriminatory and protective policies.

Finally, gaining significant academic impact (described later in the proposal) will also be central to the anticipated public policy impact as government efforts towards bearing down on racial discrimination over several decades have been impeded by a lack of robust evidence on its prevalence and its patterns of impact, and on identifying risk groups and harassment "hot spots". This knowledge is central to informing policy debate on priorities and accountabilities for intervention.