Online Racial Discrimination, Suicidal Ideation, and Traumatic Stress in a National Sample of Black Adolescents

This cross-sectional study examines data from the National Survey of Critical Digital Literacy for Black adolescents to gauge the direct and indirect associations between online racial discrimination and suicidal ideation through posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms.

 Completing and mailing back a paper form in a postage-paid envelope  Calling a toll-free hotline phone number maintained by Ipsos  Going to a designated Ipsos website and completing the recruitment form online After initially accepting the invitation to join the panel, participants are asked to complete a short demographic survey (the initial Core Profile Survey); answers to this survey allow efficient panel sampling and weighting for future surveys.Upon completing the Core Profile Survey, participants become active panel members.All panel members are provided privacy and confidentiality protections.
Household Member Recruitment.During the initial recruitment survey, all household members are enumerated.Following enumeration, attempts are made to recruit every household member who is at least 13 years old to participate in KnowledgePanel surveys.For household members aged 13 to 17, consent is collected from the parents or the legal guardian during the initial recruitment interview.No direct communication with teenagers is attempted before obtaining parental consent.Once household members are recruited for the panel and assigned to a study sample, they are notified by email for survey taking, or panelists can visit their online member page for survey taking (instead of being contacted by telephone or postal mail).This allows surveys to be fielded quickly and economically.In addition, this approach reduces the burden placed on respondents, since email notification is less intrusive than telephone calls and the self-administered mode minimizes social desirability bias and positivity effects that can be present with an interviewer.Many respondents find answering online questionnaires more interesting and engaging than being questioned by a telephone interviewer.Furthermore, respondents have the convenience to choose what day and time to complete their assigned survey.

Random Selection
Panel members are randomly selected so that survey results can properly represent the U.S. population with a measurable level of accuracy and a calculable response rate, features that are not obtainable from nonprobability or opt-in online panels (for comparisons of results from probability versus nonprobability methods, see MacInnis et al., 2018 16 and Yeager et al., 2011 17 ).

Survey
Survey Sampling.Once panel members are recruited and profiled by completing our Core Profile Survey, they become eligible for selection for client surveys.Typically, specific survey samples are based on an equal probability selection method (EPSEM) for general population surveys.Customized stratified random sampling based on "profile" data can also be implemented as required by the study design.Profile data can also be used when a survey calls for pre-screening-that is, members are drawn from a subsample of the panel, such as females, Republicans, grocery shoppers, etc. (This can reduce screening costs, particularly for lower incidence subgroups.)In such cases, we ensure that all subsequent survey samples drawn that week are selected in such a way as to result in a sample that remains representative of the population distributions.
Survey Administration.Once assigned to a survey, members receive a notification email letting them know there is a new survey available for them to complete.This email notification contains a link that sends them to the survey.No login name or password is required.The field period depends on the client's needs and can range anywhere from a few hours to several weeks.Typically, after three days, automatic email reminders are sent to all non-responding panel members in the sample.Additional email reminders are sent, or custom reminder schedules are set up as needed.To assist panel members with their survey taking, everyone has a personalized member portal listing all assigned surveys that have yet to be completed.

Response Rates
As a member of the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), Ipsos follows the AAPOR standards for response rate reporting.While the AAPOR standards were established for single survey administrations and not for multi-stage panel surveys, we use the Callegaro-DiSogra (2008) 18 algorithms for calculating KnowledgePanel survey response rates.

Sample Weighting
As detailed above, significant resources and infrastructure are devoted to the recruitment process for KnowledgePanel so that our active panel members can properly represent the population of the U.S.This representation is achieved not only with respect to a broad set of geodemographic indicators, but also for hard-toreach (such as those without Internet access or Spanish-language-dominant Hispanics) who are recruited in proper proportions.Consequently, the raw distribution of KnowledgePanel mirrors that of the U.S. adults fairly closely, barring occasional disparities that emerge for certain subgroups due to differential recruitment and attrition.
For selection of general population samples from KnowledgePanel, a patented methodology has been developed that ensures all samples behave as EPSEM samples.Briefly, this methodology starts by weighting the pool of active members to the geodemographic benchmarks secured from a combination of the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) and the latest March supplement of the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS) along several dimensions.Using the resulting weights as measures of size, a probability-proportional-to-size (PPS) procedure is used to select study specific samples.It is the application of this PPS methodology with the imposed size measures that produces demographically balanced and representative samples that behave as EPSEM.Moreover, in instances where a study design requires any form of oversampling of certain subgroups, such departures from an EPSEM design are accounted for by adjusting the design weights in reference to the Census benchmarks for the population of interest.Typically, the geodemographic dimensions used for weighting the entire KnowledgePanel include the following dimensions, with additional nesting of dimensions as well:  Gender (Male/Female)  Age (18-29, 30-44, 45-59, and 60+)  Race/Hispanic ethnicity (White/Non-Hispanic, Black/Non-Hispanic, Other/Non-Hispanic, 2+ Races/Non-Hispanic, Hispanic)  Education (Less than High School, High School, Some College, Bachelor and beyond)  Census Region (Northeast, Midwest, South, West)  Household income (under $10k, $10K to <$25k, $25K to <$50k, $50K to <$75k, $75K to  <$100k, $100K to <$150k, and $150K+)  Home ownership status (Own, Rent/Other)  Household size (1, 2, 3, 4+)  Metropolitan Area (Yes, No)  Hispanic Origin (Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Other, Non-Hispanic)  Language Dominance (non-Hispanic and English Dominant, Bilingual, and Spanish Dominant Hispanic) when survey is administered in both English and Spanish NSCDL Study-Specific Post-Stratification Weights.Once all survey data have been collected and processed, design weights are adjusted to account for any differential nonresponse that may have occurred.Depending on the specific target population for a given study, geodemographic distributions for the corresponding population are obtained from the CPS, the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS), or in certain instances from the weighted KnowledgePanel profile data.For this purpose an iterative proportional fitting (raking) procedure is used to produce the final weights.In the final step, calculated weights are examined to identify and, if necessary, trim outliers at the extreme upper and lower tails of the weight distribution.The resulting weights are then scaled to aggregate to the total sample size of all eligible respondents.For this study, our weighting process included the following steps: 1.In the first step, design weights for all KnowledgePanel (KP) parent assignees were computed to reflect their selection probabilities.
2. We then multiplied the parents' design weights by the number of 11-19 year old teens in the household (1 vs 2+ based on QS2) to account for the probability of teen selection.These served as the design weights for KP teen respondents.These design weights for KP teen respondents were raked to the following geodemographic distributions of the age 11-19 White/Non-Hispanic, African-American/Non-Hispanic (including biracial African-Americans), and Hispanic population with finer geo-demographic adjustments within the three race-ethnicity groups.The benchmarks were obtained from the 2019 American Community Survey (ACS).The metropolitan status benchmarks were obtained from the 2020 March Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS).

eFigure 1 .
Definition  kp_weight: Weights for KP respondents (interim weights not delivered)  offpanel_weight: Weights for Opt-In respondents (interim weights not delivered)  weight: Weights for total KP and Opt-In respondents  weight_White: Weights for total KP and Opt-In White respondents © 2024 Tynes BM et al.JAMA Psychiatry.Partial mediation path model for the effects of online racial discrimination and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder on suicide ideation among girls and boys.All path effects reflect standardized estimates.*p .05;**p < .01.BM et al.JAMA Psychiatry.

eFigure 2 .
Partial mediation path model for the effects of online racial discrimination and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder on suicide ideation among three age groups.All path effects reflect standardized estimates.*p .05;**p < .01.