The Institutional Racism Scale (IRS) was developed to assess how individuals look at racism, engage in activities to reduce racism, and view organizational commitment to the reduction of institutional racism. Existing methods for evaluating racism provided a framework for developing the scale. The final instrument generated after testing and revision of an original scale consisted of 72 items grouped into 6 subscales, including (1) indices of racism (2) strategies for reducing racism, (3) strategies for reducing racism effectiveness, (4) personal efforts to reduce racism, (5) agency climate for racism, and (6) managememt efforts to reduce racism. Administration of the scale to different groups provided additional information on the influence of race (minority versus nonminority) and reference group (white college students, government personnel, and participants in a conference on institutional racism) on individual perceptions of racism. In general, the minority and conference groups (as opposed to the nonminority group, college students, and government personnel) were more sensitive to occurrences of racism, used more strategies to reduce racism, viewed these strategies as more effective, perceived more racism in organizations, and had less favorable views of their administrators' behavior in regard to reducing racism in the organization. (Author/MJL)