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Abstract
Most universities today require their students to learn about diversity as a part of their degree. Research has examined the effectiveness of diversity courses at changing attitudes toward groups, focusing on sexism or racism, within psychology and women’s studies disciplines. Given the increasing concern over bias in policing, however, this diversity training may be of importance to the study of criminal justice. The current study aims to examine the effectiveness of a diversity course within a criminal justice program at changing perceptions of groups using a survey based on validated measures of attitudes toward women, homosexuality, and symbolic racism. Change in attitudes between the pre-test and post-test are examined. Results suggest that the course is effective at changing attitudes toward homosexuality, but not race or sex. The results also suggest that these perceptions are dependent on group characteristics.
Notes
1 This may no longer be the case, given recent changes in the political climate and the increase in acts of overt racism as seen in the news.
2 While there were a few students who took the course more than once during the study time frame, these students only completed the survey once during this time frame.
3 The student body is approximately 59% female, 70% white, and 16% black, and 14% over the age of 24.
4 VIFs were examined. The VIFs for classification were slightly high (>3), which could indicate that multicollinearity is an issue. Further analyses indicated that classification is related to age. Removing either set of characteristics from the analysis does not alter the results.