The utility of Allport's conditions of intergroup contact for predicting perceptions of improved racial attitudes and beliefs - Contact Hypothesis

Journal of Social Issues, Winter, 1998 by Michele Andrisin Wittig, Sheila Grant-Thompson

Facilitator Judgments

Respondents and survey distribution. During the 1997-98 school year, 250 college student facilitators participated in the RAP program. In the fall, 84 college students led RAP discussions in a total of 56 RAP classes. In the spring, 166 college students led RAP discussions in a total of 86 RAP classes. (Typically facilitator pairs co-lead discussions.) The intervention typically lasted 8 weeks, but in some cases as few as 4., depending on the secondary school academic calendar. Facilitators were mailed a Final Facilitator Survey about 7 weeks after beginning their RAP class discussions. Facilitators were mailed one Final Facilitator Survey for each RAP class they led; some facilitators led more than one class. Sixty-six Final Facilitator Surveys (from 63 facilitators) were received over the course of the academic year. Because some of the facilitators evaluated more than one class, not all the sources of data are independent. Therefore, multiple evaluations from the same facilitators were removed via random deletion (in a process similar to that used for Final Teacher Surveys and described above), yielding a final sample of 63 cases with complete data.

Survey description. Final Facilitator Surveys contained ten sections. Data for the present report are taken from section 5 (judgments of changes in RAP students' racial attitudes and beliefs) and section 7 (a set of the same five questions about classroom climate that the teachers received).

Analysis of facilitator perceptions as predictors of perceived student changes in racial attitudes and beliefs. A composite predictor variable was constructed from the five items tapping facilitator perceptions of classroom climate in the same way as had been done for the teacher analysis ([Alpha] = .81). The outcome variables for the present analysis were very similar to those used for the teacher data analysis, except that the items began with the stem "Rate the extent to which the following were achieved in the [RAP] class . . ." and item c was: "You communicated your support of positive intergroup interactions" (instead of "The facilitators communicated . . ."). The descriptive statistics for the five variables composing the predictor were as follows: equal status (M = 5.95, SD = 1.35), interdependence (M = 5.36, SD = 1.41), facilitator norm (M = 6.24, SD = 1.03), association (M = 5.52, SD = 1.46), and contradiction of negative stereotypes (M = 5.05, SD = 1.84). For the composite predictor, M = 5.63, SD = 1.12. For the outcome variables, these descriptive statistics were as follows: comfort (M = 5.11, SD = 1.57), equal worth (M = 5.21, SD = 1.43), and friendships (M= 5.29, SD = 1.41).

Results showed that the composite contributed significantly to the prediction of each of the three outcome variables. Specifically, the facilitators' assessment of the extent to which the set of five classroom climate conditions were achieved accounted for 28% of the variance in their judgments of students' increased comfort talking about race, F (1, 61) = 23.44, p [less than] .001; 49% of the variance in their judgments of students' increased recognition of equal worth of all groups, F (1, 61) = 58.67, p [less than] .001; and 49% of the variance in their judgments of students' greater openness to cross-racial friendships, F (1, 61) = 58.10, p [less than] .001. In additional analyses using each component of the Contact Hypothesis as a separate predictor in a series of three standard multiple regressions, two of the five components added significantly to the facilitators' perceptions of each of the three student outcomes: perceptions that "students of all racial and ethnic groups were given equal status" and that they "came to know each other as individuals."