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Abstract
The issue of race on college campuses has been one of the most profound and controversial topics in higher education (Astin, Citation1993). Much research has focused on outcomes associated with diversity, and social practices have been adopted to facilitate diversity. Empirical assessments of the consequences associated with these initiatives have received less attention. This paper presents an empirical study of the consequences of participating in MRULE, an innovative race relations program promoting interactional diversity. This paper reports the findings of a three-group quasi experiment (N=164) that was designed to assess how participation in the program affected salience, knowledge, attitudes and overt behaviors related to race. Results suggest that students in the program hold significantly more positive attitudes, express interracial behaviors more frequently, and possess more accurate knowledge regarding issues related to race, in comparison to the control participants, and that these improvements were more than self-selection alone. The implications of these findings are discussed.
The author wishes to thank Mary Bresnahan, and the MRULE student leaders for their help on this project. This paper received the 2004 Stanley L. Saxton Applied Research Award from Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research.
Notes
This article is from the first author's Master's thesis completed under the direction of the second author.