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In response to rapidly changing demographics and increased racial tensions, institutions across the country have implemented diversity-related initiatives-to varying degrees-designed to promote positive intergroup relations. This increased interest has resulted in a growing body of research examining the impact of curricular and cocurricular diversity activities on a variety of outcomes and racial bias in particular. Whereas past reviews have highlighted the inconsistency in the research findings thus far, this study presents the first quantitative synthesis on this topic to date. The findings of this meta-analysis demonstrate that these initiatives do indeed reduce bias and that the effectiveness of this result depends on the characteristics of the program as well as the students.
Keywords: meta-analysis, diversity, higher education, curriculum.
Over the past 50 years, the rapidly changing demographics of the United States have seen a parallel shift in the demographic makeup of our college campuses. Naturally, this change has been met with some resistance as well as racial tension. In response, institutions have implemented diversity-related initiatives - to varying degrees - designed to promote positive intergroup relations (Engberg, 2004). This increased interest has resulted in a growing body of research examining the impact of curricular and cocurricular diversity activities on a variety of outcomes and racial bias in particular. Past literature reviews on the effects of these diversityrelated activities on racial bias have highlighted the inconsistency in research findings thus far (e.g., Engberg, 2004). As a result, further analyses are required to determine why some interventions are more effective than others. In what follows, I report on the first quantitative synthesis of the effects of curricular and cocurricular diversity activities on racial bias. Using a modern and rigorous analytic framework, I report that these initiatives do reduce bias and that the effectiveness of this result depends on the characteristics of the program and the students.
Although it does appear that these diversity-related activities have a generally positive influence on reducing students' racial bias, the absolute magnitude of that effect is still unclear. For the most part, the majority of studies examining these types of interventions on racial bias have shown positive effects (Antony, 1993; Astin, 1993a; Chang, 2002a; Gurin, Dey, Hurtado, & Gurin, 2002; Hurtado, 2001; Hyun, 1994; Inkelas, 1998; Katz & Ivey, 1977; MacPhee,...