Friday, October 1, 2010

MC Activity Reflection Paper Guidelines

Multicultural Activity: Reflection Paper Guidelines

As part of the experiential component of diversity training, interns select a minimum of 2 multicultural events to attend, one during fall semester and one during spring semester. In addition, interns complete 2 brief reflection papers describing their experiences, thoughts, feelings and learning experiences. Suggested length is 2-3 pages, typewritten. The papers should address the following questions:

1. Briefly describe the activity. What did you find most interesting? What did you find most different or difficult to understand?
2. How comfortable were you attending the activity? Why?
3. Did you interact with any of the participants? If you did, describe your interaction. If not, why not?
4. What was it like to be unfamiliar with the cultural norms of a group that has different customs and norms than those you are familiar with?
5. What emotional reactions, if any, did you have? How do your personal reactions and assumptions differ from group members participating in the activity?
6. How could your emotional reactions and assumptions influence the counseling relationship?
7. Identify ways in which you can apply your enhanced awareness, combined with your knowledge of the ADDRESSING model, to your work as a culturally competent psychologist?

NOTE: Interns will notify the instructor when they have engaged in the MC activity so that we can discuss these activities in the MC seminar.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Prejudice Reduction Database

Click on the title above for the database The following is a link to a really useful database for prejudice reduction.

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Dear Colleagues,

I am happy to announce the launch of our online database of prejudice
and conflict reduction studies, a bibliography of approximately 1,000
empirical reports of interventions to reduce prejudice and/or intergroup
conflict. Donald Green and I initially compiled this database for our
2009 Annual Review paper “Prejudice Reduction: What Works? A Review and
Assessment of Research and Practice.”

The database consists of laboratory and field-based studies, examining
interventions from priming to affirmative action policy. Visitors can do
a keyword search to find specific types of interventions or outcome
measures, for example “diversity training,” “extended contact,”
“media,” “discrimination” and “implicit bias.” Using the advanced search
option, users can also search by study methodology: observational field
study, quasi-experimental field study, laboratory experiment, and field
experiment. Thus, for example, users can search for all educational
interventions tested with a field experimental design.

Users can export the studies they select into a bibliographic list in
APA format, post comments on references, and sign up for an RSS feed to
receive updates of new references added to the database. Within the
database, users also have the option to email in suggestions and new
references (see more on this below).
The database includes unpublished dissertations and policy reports
(advanced search provides an option to look within published or
unpublished). We encourage users to email us new dissertations,
unpublished reports, and any studies we may have missed. The “Help” menu
in the database contains an option to “Email Database Owner,” or you
email me directly at epaluck@princeton.edu. We will continuously update
the database.

You can find the database at: betsylevypaluck.com (my webpage), under
the heading “Online database,” or directly through this link: Prejudice
and Conflict reduction

Before emailing me new studies, please read the description of our
exclusion criteria for the database, printed below.
We hope that this will be a pragmatic resource for scholars and
practitioners interested in evidence-based theory and intervention.
Please disseminate widely. Enjoy, and do not hesitate send in your
feedback after you have a look.

All the best,
Betsy Levy Paluck, Princeton University
Donald P. Green, Yale University
with assistance from: Audrey Hall, Meredith Levine, and Rhiannon Thomas
supported by: The Institution for Social and Policy Studies (Yale
University) and Princeton University

Database exclusion criteria: (from Paluck & Green, 2009)
We searched for published and unpublished reports of interventions
conducted with a stated intention of reducing prejudice or
prejudice-related phenomena. We combed online databases of research
literatures in psychology, sociology, education, medicine, policy
studies, and organizational behavior, pairing primary search words
“prejudice,” “stereotype,” “discrimination,” “bias,” “racism,”
“homophobia,” “hate,” “tolerance,” “reconciliation,” “cultural
competence/sensitivity,” and “multicultural” with operative terms like
“reduce,” “program,” “intervention,” “modify,” “education,” “diversity
training,” “sensitize,” and “cooperat∗.”

To locate unpublished academic work, we posted requests on several
organizations’ email listservs, including the Society for Personality
and Social Psychology and the American Evaluation Association, and we
reviewed relevant conference proceedings. Lexis-Nexis and Google were
used to locate nonacademic reports by nonprofit groups, government and
nongovernmental agencies, and consulting firms that evaluate prejudice.
We examined catalogues that advertise diversity programs to see if
evaluations were mentioned or cited. Several evaluation consultants sent
us material or spoke with us about their evaluation techniques. Our
search produced an immense database of 985 published and unpublished
reports written by academics and nonacademics involved in research,
practice, or both.

The assembled body of work includes multicultural education, antibias
instruction more generally, workplace diversity initiatives, dialogue
groups, cooperative learning, moral and values education, intergroup
contact, peace education, media interventions, reading interventions,
intercultural and sensitivity training, cognitive training, and a host
of miscellaneous techniques and interventions. The targets of these
programs are racism, homophobia, ageism; antipathy toward ethnic,
religious, national, and fictitious (experimental) groups; prejudice
toward persons who are overweight, poor, or disabled; and attitudes
toward diversity, reconciliation, and multiculturalism more generally.

We excluded from our purview programs that addressed sex-based prejudice
(the literature dealing with beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors toward
women and men in general, as distinguished from gender-identity
prejudices like homophobia). Sex-based inequality intersects with and
reinforces other group-based prejudice (Jackman 1994, Pratto & Walker
2004), but given the qualitatively different nature and the distinctive
theoretical explanations for sex-based prejudice and inequality (Eagly &
Mlednic 1994, Jackman 1994, Sidanius & Pratto 1999), we believe relevant
interventions deserve their own review. The resulting database
(available at http://www.betsylevypaluck.com) constitutes the most
extensive list of published and unpublished prejudice-reduction reports
assembled to date.