Abstracts Psychology

Video Observations of Student and Facilitator Processes in Intergroup Dialogues.

by Elizabeth Ann Meier

This dissertation draws on data from a nine university research project exploring how to effectively leverage diversity on college campuses to produce educational benefits. This dissertation uses qualitative and quantitative video-research methods to explore communication and affective processes occurring among a subset of the dialogue facilitators and undergraduate students who participated in this larger-scale study. The larger-scale randomized controlled trial tested the efficacy of an intergroup dialogue pedagogical model with a specific focus on understanding the communication, affective and cognitive processes that occur between individuals of different race/ethnic or gender groups that produce positive intergroup outcomes. In total, 40 facilitators and 264 students participated in this dissertation study. This sample included 20 experimental dialogue courses: ten gender dialogues, and ten race/ethnicity dialogues. Each semester-long dialogue course was video-taped on three occasions. Approximately 35 minutes of common dialogue-based activities were selected for coding across each of the three (early, mid, and late semester) video-taped sessions. Thus, each dialogue course had over 100 minutes of video selected and qualitatively coded on a minute-by-minute basis for team facilitation style and three individual student processes: engagement, anxiety, and openness. Results from type III omnibus linear mixed-effect model analyses of the quantitative video coding data indicate that student engagement, anxiety, and openness varied by dialogue topic (gender or race/ethnicity), as well as by interactions between dialogue topic and the following predictive factors: the size of the dialogue, the video session (one, two, or three); and the type of common activity being coded. Additional analyses revealed an association between facilitator use of advocacy and increased levels of student anxiety, as well as decreased levels of student engagement and openness. In contrast, facilitator use of reflection and redirection, or listening and support, was associated with lower levels of student anxiety. Facilitator listening and support was also associated with higher levels of student engagement and openness. This dissertation concludes with a discussion of potential implications of these results for future research, dialogue facilitator training, community organizing, and social work practice.