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Abi Martin, PsyD, is a 2021 graduate of the PsyD Program in Clinical Psychology at Antioch University, Seattle.

Dissertation Committee

Jude Bergkamp, PsyD, Committee Chair

Michael J. Toohey, PhD, Committee Member

Paula K. Miller-Buckner, PhD, Committee Member

Keywords

social privilege, social privilege awareness, social privilege integration, systemic oppression, scale development

Document Type

Dissertation

Publication Date

2021

Abstract

The APA’s 2017 multicultural guidelines task psychologists with the aspirational goal of understanding the nuances of historical and contemporary systems of power, privilege, and oppression. Scholars such as Helms (1984) demonstrated the critical need to readjust psychology’s focus from oppressed groups to privileged groups. In her seminal 1988 article, McIntosh insisted that in order to “redesign social systems,” privileged groups must first acknowledge their “unseen dimensions” (p. 1). Similarly, Black and Stone (2005) and Johnson (2018) asserted the lack of social privilege awareness is part of American culture, which helps to maintain the invisibility of privilege and the status quo of oppression. Since then, educators such as Case (2013) have argued that increased awareness of social privilege can shed light on and address the status quo of systemic and structural oppression. While instruments that measure constructs related to social privilege currently exist, psychology’s understanding of these constructs has been growing. Bergkamp et al. (2020) created a developmental social privilege integration model (DSPIM), which captures the growing definition of social privilege awareness by introducing the concept of social privilege integration. Based on the current literature, this study’s objective was to construct items for a new developmental social privilege integration scale that will address the limitations of existing measures. This study hopes to contribute to the field of psychology as well as the general community by aiding in the accurate measurement of social privilege integration to better address systems of oppression in the future.

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Abi Martin, PsyD, 2021

ORCID Scholar ID# 0000-0002-1494-987X

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