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Dialogue and Deliberation

Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice LEAD Initiative
January 19, 2017 Samantha Scott University of Puget Sound
Dialogue and Deliberation:  Undergraduate Student Study Questions the Effectiveness of Diversity Training for Engagement Outcomes, Study Summary

In student affairs, progress is often measured observationally and anecdotally. For instance, student affairs staff might say: “That student is really engaged” or “20 people attended our programming!” But what if student affairs work was observed more frequently through a scientific and quantitative lens? What if skills learned in academic classrooms were applied to work in student affairs, truly embracing the concept of an integrated educational experience inherent to the liberal arts? The purpose of this project was twofold: (1) to create and validate two scales, (2) administer the scales to student affairs student leaders and provide feedback to student affairs professional staff.

In Study 1, two scales titled “Social Justice Commitment Scale” and “Perceived Organizational Readiness for Diversity” were administered to participants along with convergent and divergent measures for the purposes of assessing the validity and reliability of the scales (N = 30). Both scales demonstrated moderate to good validity and reliability, congruent with scales published in academic journals.

In Study 2, the two scales, along with scales that measured social desirability, bias awareness, LGBTQ allyship, and ethnicity awareness, were administered using Qualtrics survey software to student affairs student staff leaders from residence life, student life operations, and the Center for Intercultural and Civic Engagement (N = 51). Demographic variables such as number of trainings attended, classes related to diversity taken, years in student affairs, and events attended on campus related to social justice were also collected. Data were analyzed using Pearson’s R correlations.

On average, students had spent approximately 2 semesters in student affairs, had attended 1.5 diversity trainings through student affairs, had taken 1 class related to diversity and inclusion, and had attended less than 3 events related to diversity and inclusion the past semester. On a scale of 1 (“Not at all”) to 10 (“Very”), students indicated that they were somewhat prepared for engaging in diversity and inclusion work (M = 5.72) and somewhat comfortable approaching coworkers about derogatory comments (M = 5.18). Taking more diversity classes, joining more identity-based and social justice-based clubs, and being more aware of one’s identity moderately to strongly related to increased commitment to social justice (ps < .05). Increased ethnicity identity awareness was associated with taking more classes, attending more events, and being more committed to social justice (ps < .05). Increased diversity training was not related to either increased commitment to social justice, increased allyship to the LGBTQ community, nor increased ethnicity awareness (ps > .05). However, time in student affairs was positively correlated with increased comfort approaching coworkers who said derogatory comments and increased ethnicity awareness. Additionally, the more aware students were of their own biases, the less ready they perceived the department to be for diverse employees (ps < .05).

From these results, student affairs professionals can make more empirically informed decisions about how to engage and thoughtfully train their students. First, these data reflect the sentiment that mandatory training is not a significant component of bringing values of social justice into student affairs environments (i.e., residential halls). Rather, encouraging students to attend events, take more classes, and join more clubs related to diversity and inclusion is an empirically supported way to increase these values. In other words, asking students to undergo training is not enough to bring these important values into student communities. Rather, students must engage thoughtfully and broadly in both academic and cocurricular domains of campus to truly embody such principles. Additionally, these data suggest that once students are able to recognize their own biases, they see the biases institutionally. Encouraging and helping students to recognize their biases may in turn help student leaders more aptly identify institutional and systemic biases that disproportionately impact minoritized groups, particularly minoritized student affairs leaders. As such, focusing on bias awareness during training will likely cultivate a tangible asset to student affairs departments seeking to reduce and eliminate systems of oppression inherent to higher education. Finally, retention of student affairs employees over time appears to be important. Students with more experience, according to these results, are more likely to cultivate values of diversity and inclusion.