Did they account for the type of majors these students chose? I can pretty much guarantee someone in say, and English or Women and Gender studies major would become less racist and more considerate/compassionate over time. I imagine someone in science, math, or business related fields would be less so, since they focus more on data.
LOL so true. I needed an upper level economics class last semester and holy shit the economics department is on a completely different planet than the one I am familiar with
Not scientific at all (oh the irony), but I'm a math and linguistics major from a family of math majors, and have taught math (among, of course, math majors) at three different high schools, and all of us have become more open-minded over time. I was completely blind to my privilege in high school.
I think in general, a lot of people with strong math and science backgrounds realize how full of shit people like John Derbyshire are when they try and make their points with bogus statistics.
I think you're probably right about business majors, but I don't think it's a data thing. I think it's a personality thing. If you're majoring in a business or economics field, there's probably a better-than-average chance you're more interested in making money than thinking critically or pursuing social justice.
ETA: Although my math minor is always making me think, at the back of my mind, "One counter-example disproves the theorem..." whenever someone dismisses anecdata. ;-)
research geekeryroseofjulyApril 10 2012, 23:03:27 UTC
Not every study needs a control group, and many correlational longitudinal studies don't have one. This study is a within-person design. The point was probably not originally "college makes you more racist!" The science writer was the one who came up with that stupid headline (ugh, science writers.)
This was probably an exploratory study designed to look at changes over time in racial understanding in college students. I do longitudinal studies like this myself and we don't use controls, either, because we're not interested in comparing our samples to others, we're interested in studying specific populations and their trajectories
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I think in general, a lot of people with strong math and science backgrounds realize how full of shit people like John Derbyshire are when they try and make their points with bogus statistics.
I think you're probably right about business majors, but I don't think it's a data thing. I think it's a personality thing. If you're majoring in a business or economics field, there's probably a better-than-average chance you're more interested in making money than thinking critically or pursuing social justice.
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ETA: Although my math minor is always making me think, at the back of my mind, "One counter-example disproves the theorem..." whenever someone dismisses anecdata. ;-)
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God knows community college is making me even more bitter and jaded. (Though, in my case, also more socially aware and rage-filled in retaliation.)
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They used survey data of students at 6 liberal arts colleges and 11 universities collected by the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education.
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This was probably an exploratory study designed to look at changes over time in racial understanding in college students. I do longitudinal studies like this myself and we don't use controls, either, because we're not interested in comparing our samples to others, we're interested in studying specific populations and their trajectories ( ... )
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