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To Confront or Not to Confront: Measuring Claiming Rates in Discrimination Grievances

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Herbert M. Kritzer ,
Neil Vidmar  and
W. A. Bogart
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Abstract

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This note reexamines the generally accepted belief that persons with discrimination-related grievances are much less likely to complain about their problem than are persons with grievances arising from consumer purchases, torts, or other common kinds of personal problems. We find that previously reported analyses greatly overstate the gap between complaining in discrimination problems and other kinds of problems. Drawing on data from three surveys, each conducted in a different country (the United States, Canada, and Australia), we find that for some types of discrimination problems the level of complaining in fact equals or exceeds complaining in other arenas.

Type
Research Note
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , 1991 , pp. 875 - 887
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

This note is drawn from a paper prepared for presentation at meetings of the Southern Political Science Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 8–10 November 1990. The analysis was supported by grants from the Canadian Studies Grant Program and from the National Science Foundation (Grant No. SES-8722540). The U.S. data were collected with support from the U.S. Department of Justice (Contract No. JAOIA-79-C-0040). The Ontario data were collected with support from the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General. Neither the suppliers nor the original collectors of the data bear any responsibility for the analyses and interpretations reported herein.

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