Women of color encounter sexist and racist interactions, content, and media online that dehumanize their gendered racial identities. Yet, there is a dearth of quantitative empirical studies on online gendered racism and its impact on the mental health and well-being of women of color. We employed an intersectionality framework to develop the Online Gendered Racism Scale for Women of Color (OGRS-WoC) for the initial examination of the impact on mental health and to promote future empirical studies. Previous literature reviews, a survey of social media platforms, and expert review guided item development. Exploratory (N = 559) and confirmatory (N = 424) factor analyses yielded a three-factor structure and produced a 26-item scale with the following subscales: (a) Direct Gendered Racist Cyberaggression (12 items), (b) Vicarious Gendered Racist Cyberaggression (10 items), and (c) Gendered Racist Online Media (four items). Internal consistency estimates ranged from .86 to .96 and the OGRS-WoC accounted for 61.2% of the variance. An analysis of a second-order model indicated that using a total scale score is also viable. Preliminary evidence of construct validity emerged, as OGRS-WoC scores correlated with measures of offline discrimination, gendered racial microaggressions, anxiety and depressive symptoms, and resilience, aligning with theoretical frameworks and empirical findings. We found strong psychometric evidence of OGRS-WoC in assessing online gendered racism for women of color. We discuss future directions for research and practice recommendations based on the OGRS-WoC. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Keum et al. (Thu,) studied this question.