Asians tend to occupy some of the most overcrowded and low quality housing in the country. Poor housing has been shown to lead to bronchial problems and other respiratory infections, especially among children.
Another explanation for inequalities in health outlined by Mares et al. (1987) is the unequal access to medical care, which is experienced by some ethnic minority groups. This may be less to do with direct racism than what might be termed “institutional racism. This means that language differences may present a barrier, as may lack of access to a woman doctor for some Asian women. Some doctors may have limited knowledge of certain illnesses that affect particular ethnic groups. Mares et al. appeared to find that people from ethnic minority groups were more likely to complain of irrelevant and discriminatory treatment.
Racism also means that Black people and Asians are more likely to be attacked and subjected to abuse. A potential impact of racism is the direct experience and consequent fear of direct physical and/or verbal violence. A home office study of officially reported incidents of racial victimisation found that the rate for Asians was 50 times the rate of white people and the rate for African-Caribbean people was over 36 times that for white people (Brown 1984). This together with a concentration of workers in hazardous industries, and poor quality/overcrowded housing in unsafe environments is a good explanation of the over-representation of black people in the category of deaths termed “Accidents, Poisonings and Violence”.
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MAIN RESEARCH METHOD AND REASONS
The principal research method, which will be used, is a questionnaire, containing mainly closed-ended questions, focussing on what is being studied. This will allow answers to be related closely to the investigation. The advantages are that it is quick, simple, and data is easy to summarise. The disadvantage is that it may not be valid therefore some open-ended questions will be included where the response will be left open for respondents to answer in the way they like. Questionnaires should hopefully allow me to identify clear trends within the sample group and offer possible explanations.
My sample will consist of forty students from my sixth form who will be chosen randomly. Students from different ethnic minorities will be approached as well as white students, which is vital to my own study. Random selection will enable me to obtain a good balance of ethnic backgrounds. Twenty 16-18 year old males and twenty 16-18year old females will be used.
A questionnaire will also offer the opportunity to include not only the concept of racism but also my other concept of unemployment rate where respondents will be asked to give the occupation of the highest wage earner in their family. Although, in order to do this, the construction of the questionnaire will need to be undertaken carefully.
The advantages of using questionnaires are that information can be collected from a large sample of the population, making data more representative and generalisations easier. They are cheap, easy and convenient to use. A questionnaire will also offer a further advantage in terms of reliability in that it can be replicated to get similar results and draw similar findings. However they do have some disadvantages such as respondents may answer in an appropriate, rather than honest way. Within my own research the questionnaire is reliable in the sense that all of my respondents will receive the same questionnaire, and so there is no difference in the questions or the way in which questions are asked which could cause a problem.
A pilot study will be carried out before embarking upon the main research. A pilot-study is a small-scale preliminary study conducted before the main research in order to improve the design of the research. This will allow me to check if there are any uncertainties over the questions. Obviously if any problems arise I have the perfect opportunity to resolve these prior to handing out the final questionnaire.
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POTENTIAL PROBLEMS
Before carrying out this investigation I am aware of some of the problems which I will come across. The use of questionnaires itself has some disadvantages such as the sample may not be fully representative of the wider population, due to the fact that those who respond to my questionnaire maybe different to from the rest of the sample who have not answered the questionnaire. Another disadvantage is that respondents may respond in a way which they feel is appropriate and not necessarily honest, these disadvantages could lead to inaccurate results which in return could lead to unreliable conclusions.
A second, crucial problem is the choice of my sample group. Just taking a group of students from my sixth form immediately raises the question of bias. My sample does not include people who didn’t carry on education or those at college. Also sixth form includes mainly people who are middle-class, white and well educated, and therefore arising the major issue of whether I will be able to include enough ethnic minorities in my sample. This investigation is based upon ethnic minorities so it is very important for me to carefully select the correct number of people from different ethnic backgrounds. However the reason this sample was chosen is due to practical reasons and because it is more efficient for me to test this sample.
The ethical issue involved is that participants won’t know exactly what the study is about. Also because questionnaires will be completed in my presence, the problem which may arise here is that respondents may feel pressurised. Also questions are imposed on the respondent, and because of my presence the respondents may reflect my values, rather than their own and give answers which they feel are relevant, rather than true, therefore I will try to keep myself fairly distant.
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(Total: 1198 words)
