PERLA Data download here!
There are two stages of PERLA Data:
The first stage is in-depth PERLA surveys. Download here! These are surveys of Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, which consist of over 100 survey items. This survey instrument is based on extensive discussion of the topics and discussion and pretesting of the survey questions. The survey items included a wide range of issues regarding race and ethnicity in Latin America in contemporary times including in the way ethnic identities are formed, the extent and nature of inequality and discrimination including that based on ethnoracial identity as well as a measure of skin color, the nature of stereotyping, reports of discrimination against the respondent and that the respondent witnessed, the nature of social relations across racial/ethnic boundaries and public opinion regarding social movements and public policies based on ethnicity and race, feelings about the nation, sexuality and a host of indicators about socioeconomic position and inequality. You can view the survey questions in the links below.
The second stage is a short Ethnicity module in the 2010 America's Barometer. It consists of seven questions for eight countries: Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Guatemala. The 2010 Americas Barometer and subsequent Americas Barometers include a color palette and a basic racial classification question for the more than 20 countries of the Americas Barometer. The 2010 Americas Barometer Data (with the ethnicity module) is also available as explained below.
Survey Questions
For Mexico, Colombia and Peru, the PERLA effort represents the first in-depth survey of ethnicity and race. In Brazil, by contrast, several surveys of ethnicity have been conducted since at least 1995, which reflects that country’s longer history of research as well as its general concern with racial issues. In many ways, a fairly developed body of research on Brazil, including work by Dr. Edward Telles, serves as a useful guide.
PERLA questions are included in the 2010 LAPOP (Latin American Public Opinion Project) ethnicity module of the Americas’ Barometer. The LAPOP module is used in a large set of Latin-American countries but it contains a smaller number of PERLA survey items than the in-depth PERLA surveys.
There are three ways to access the LAPOP data through their website:
1. Run analysis from their website. The analysis can be simple (percents) or complex (logit, OLS, with scales, etc.)
2. Any Latin American can get the data for his or her country for free
3. Institutions may subscribe to the datasets to download the data online via IP access
The Color Palette
Skin color ratings have been used in several surveys about racial discrimination and racial attitudes in the United States (Keith and Herring 1991, Gullickson 2005) but have rarely been used in Latin America. The availability of a variable denoting skin color as observed by the interviewer allows us to reasonably fix actual skin tone rather than rely solely on self-identification of race/ethnicity.
For skin color ratings, interviewers rated the facial skin color of each respondent according to colors on a skin color palette, which was not shown to the respondent. The palette included eleven skin tones, with “1” being the lightest and “11” being the darkest. The colors of the palette came from internet photographs and the palette was extensively pre-tested for ease of use by interviewers and to see if covered the range of colors found in the field. Interviewers were advised that the survey was interested in rating skin color because social science evidence has shown that ordinary people commonly evaluate the skin color of others in everyday interactions and often treat them according to ideas based on color/race.
Though such skin color evaluations by interviewers are not perfect by any means, we believe they closely capture actual color among a large number of cases, as in the survey samples we have collected.
