A Critical Quantitative Approach to Intersectionality: Interrogating Race and Class in the Context of Female Chronic Pain

Addressing calls to advance critical quantitative approaches to intersectionality, this study used multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to examine how female chronic pain patients' (N = 350) interactions with their healthcare providers are, in addition to gender, shaped along axes of race and socioeconomic status. Guided by intersectionality and the theory of communicative (dis)enfranchisement (TCD), this study illustrates how quantitative methods can be used to examine how identities intersect with one another and systems of power to produce complex communication processes and outcomes, which might further exacerbate existing disparities. This study offers theoretical, methodological, and practical implications for communication scholars seeking to conduct empirical, quantitative intersectional scholarship.