Advocating for Dialogue: Short and Long-Term Outcomes of Seattle-Based KUOW Radio’s “Ask a” Project

Abstract

In this study, we report on changes to reported attitudes, knowledge, and empathy immediately after and 3 months following a round-robin conversation between “askers” and “answerers” in intergroup sessions created by a local public radio station. Listeners were invited to have short one-on-one in—person conversations with people who were members of an identifiable out-group. These were “Ask A” sessions with Muslims, transgender people, Trump supporters, police officers, formerly homeless, newcomers, immigrants, gun owners, foster parents, journalists, and Special Olympians. We found correlations among our assessed variables for askers (N = 113) going into the interactions and increases in the variables as reported after the event. Two of the expectancy variables remained high three months after the sessions.

Keywords:

• advocacy
• dialogue
• intergroup contact theory
• interaction
• stereotypes

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the two reviewers for their helpful comments and KUOW Public Radio and the University of Washington CoMotion Amazon Catalyst Fund for supporting the “Ask A” project.