Attitudes Towards Marginalized Groups

The indicator calculates a social distance score by using the Bogardus social distance scale, which measures people's willingness to participate in varying levels of social contact with members of marginalized groups, such as certain ethnic minorities or people with a disability.

Calculate the indicator's value by using the following methodology: 

1) Define the marginalized group(s) your survey focuses on.

2) Conduct individual interviews with a representative sample of the general population (or another group of respondents) about the extent to which they would be accepting of the marginalized group(s) members. For each group, ask the following question:

RECOMMENDED SURVEY QUESTION (Q) AND POSSIBLE ANSWERS (A)

Q1: Would you be willing to have [specify the marginalized group] as ….

… close relatives by marriage - as the husband/wife of your close family member? (score 1)

… your close personal friends? (score 2)

… neighbors on the same street? (score 3)

… co-workers in the same job? (score 4)

… citizens in your country? (score 5)

… non-citizen visitors in your country? (score 6)

… or would you exclude them from entering your country? (score 7)

A1 for all sub-questions: yes / no
 

A score of 1.00 indicates no social distance (the higher the score, the higher the social distance). The possible answers are only yes and no. Agreement with each statement implies agreement with all the following ones (for example, if a person is willing to have the given group member as a close personal friend, s/he is likely to be willing to have her/him also as a neighbor, co-worker, etc.). Therefore, once the respondent replies "YES" to one of the questions, the data collector should not ask the following questions. Record the score for the first answer where the respondent replies YES. For example, if a person would not be willing to have the given group members as close relatives by marriage but would accept them as close personal friends, the recorded score should be 2.

3) To calculate the indicator’s value, sum up the respondents’ scores and divide them by the number of respondents.

Disaggregate the data by gender, age groups, education level, ethnicity and other relevant criteria.