Table 3.

Recommendations for Measurement of Stigma Change

1. Select measures that represent stakeholder priorities about the goal of stigma change. Incorporate a Community-Based Participatory Research Team in all research activities. Consider the social validity of measures.

2. Evaluate stigma change and diversity. Important demographics may include ethnicity, SES, gender, education, and sexual orientation. Diversity may be important mediators through which individuals understand mental illness; e.g., Do African Americans endorse mental illness and violence more than European Americans? Diversity may also be descriptors of the person with mental illness. E.g., Are Latinos with mental illness viewed as more violent than Native Americans with these disorders?

3. Consider measures of behavior change, frequently prioritized as most important by stakeholder groups. Contrast decreasing discriminatory behavior from increasing affirming actions. On e form of affirming behavior is the degree to which research subjects participate in evidence based rehabilitation programs (e.g., the frequency in which an employer participates in a supported employment program).

4. Select measures that reflect the specific interest of targeted and local groups.

5. Choose measures that are less influenced by social desirability.

6. Consider other domains of measurement – attitudes & emotions, knowledge, information and physiological processes – which, given the status of current research, are important only as they further understanding an anti-stigma approach n behavior.

7. Outline how a physiological or information process may help to better explain stigma change.

8. Develop theory-based models of stigma. These may be especially important for measures of attitudes and emotions.

9. Measure penetration for population-based anti-stigma programs. Include both recognition and recall of previous PSAs.

10. Determine whether awareness has been improved after an anti-stigma program.