Expanding discrimination research: Beyond ethnicity and to the Web. Social Science Quarterly

Objective. This article aims to expand research about perceptions of discrimination both substantively and methodologically beyond the domains of race and ethnicity, relying partly on web-based surveys. Methods. We conducted parallel surveys over the telephone and the World-Wide Web, using standard random-digit dial (RDD) techniques for the former, and a large volunteer panel for the latter. Results. Both modes, phone and web, revealed that respondents consider discrimination based on physical appearance and economic status to be more prevalent than discrimination based on ethnicity. Respondents also reported that they themselves have been vic-timized more by physical appearance and economic-status discrimination than by ethnic discrimination. Significant differences emerged between the phone and web respondent pools, even after controlling for such independent variables as age, race, education level, and gender. Conclusions. People perceive discrimination across many aspects of social life, and appear more willing to reveal knowledge about controversial social phenomena on the web than on the phone. There is a large scholarly literature spread across the social sciences on ethnic, especially racial, discrimination (Thernstrom and Thernstrom, 1997; Sniderman and Carmines, 1997). Researchers have paid less attention to other forms of discrimination, such as that based on economic status or physical appearance.1 The relative lack of studies on physical-appearanc