Making It Count: Discrimination Auditing and the Activist Scholar Tradition

Abstract

Discrimination auditing can usefully be viewed as part of a tradition of social science activist scholarship since World War II. This perspective suggests that the single-minded pursuit of methodological rigor, especially when reflected in exclusive reliance on documents-based audits, often sacrifices other characteristics historically associated with auditing’s unique contributions to societal and scientific advancement. This chapter advocates and illustrates a balanced research agenda in which the most rigorous auditing studies are paralleled by others more directly in the activist scholar tradition. The hallmarks of that tradition are: in-person testers, the lived experience of discrimination, researcher-community partnerships, and goals beyond academic ones