The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 37, No. 2 - 41

Resident Assistant Cultural Diversity Questionnaire

dence in addressing issues relating to cultural diversity in residence halls. The questionnaire covers five components of RA confidence in addressing issues of cultural diversity related to their position.

Hu and Kuh (2003) found that White students benefit more from classroom experiences in which they interact with people from different cultural groups. This may be because students of color, as members of a cultural minority group, are more accustomed to interacting with others outside their race and ethnicity; as a result, the impact of interacting with people from other racial and ethnic backgrounds on learning and personal development may be muted for students of color compared with the impact reported by White students, a sizeable fraction of whom are for the first time meeting and significantly interacting with students of color. (p. 330) Gurin (1999) found that students learn more and think in deeper and more complex ways in a diverse educational environment and that they acquire a very broad range of skills, motivations, values, and cognitive capacities from interacting with culturally diverse peers. The second component, confidence working with culturally diverse residents, explores RAs’ belief that their previous relationships and exposure to cultural minorities have prepared them to interact with diverse groups in the residence halls. Milem and Umbach (2003), in their study to determine the influence of precollege factors on attitudes toward diversity, found that, in their sample, more than 75% of White students came from predominantly White neighborhoods, while students of color varied more in the type of neighborhoods from which they came. Therefore, a majority of White students have had fewer opportunities to form their opinions of cultural minorities from personal experiences and are probably more likely to come to conclusions about them based on stereotypical or second-hand inforV o l u m e 3 7 , No. 2 • 2 0 1 1

Most RAs are undergraduates barely out of high school and may be just a few years older than their residents; or, in some cases, they are the same age yet are expected to facilitate student development while being undergraduates themselves . They are charged with engaging residents in ways that contribute to a positive experience in residence halls and thus impacting the residents’ overall college experience .

The first component, need for cultural diversity training, assesses the belief that RAs have about the importance of their receiving diversity training. It addresses the belief that their previous experiences—in residence halls, on campus, and in classrooms—have provided them with enough information about and experiences with cultural diversity. Several studies have shown that this diversity is an important factor in students’ educational experiences.

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 37, No. 2

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