THE DILEMMA OF FACTITIOUS DEMOGRAPHIC DISTINCTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL-RESEARCH

Terms such as race, sex, and age are assumed to reflect biological cha racteristics and distinctions. In psychological research, these terms are often treated as if they were a reflection of a meaningful set of psychological constructs. A review of articles in 3 prominent journals over a 30-year period reveals that these supposed biological identifi ers are not used consistently and lack empirical and conceptual validi ty. An analysis of those articles shows that, over time, the term race has given way to the use of the more general and psychologically rele vant term ethnicity, sex and gender have been used interchangeably, an d the psychological constructs underlying or supposedly reflected in a ge are seldom discussed. It is proposed that psychosocial researchers and editors adopt a consistent definition of these terms and that rese arch include an effort to identify the underlying concepts that the in vestigators assume to be reflected in these distinctions whenever thes e labels are used to report research findings.