The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 38, No. 2 & Volume 39, No. 1 - 148

Terrell L. Strayhorn • Taris G. Mullins

circumstances related to their experiences in a campus rH. Where necessary, follow-up probes were used to prompt reconstructions of Bgmus’ experiences (e.g., “can you tell me about a time when. . . ?”). as this qualitative study sought to understand the participants’ collegiate experiences and the meanings attached to such experiences, the amount of time required for serious reflection and critical analysis of data is great (Patton, 1990). thus, all interviews were digitally recorded and professionally transcribed verbatim for subsequent analysis. transcripts were stored electronically using NVivo®, a qualitative data analysis and management software, which allowed the research team to retrieve data at any time to read, re-read, and read again the experiences shared by our participants. since we wished for our interviews to be candid, we promised our participants confidentiality, which proved to be important to several of our respondents. For example, five interviews had to be conducted in clandestine locations away from central campus (e.g., a local coffee shop, library study room), and some participants asked questions about how interviews would be transcribed, who would see the transcripts, and how they would be accessed in the future. answering their questions, building rapport, and using pseudonyms provided by participants seemed to quell any concerns about anonymity and confidentiality (glesne, 1989). although pseudonyms may mask their “real” identities (grinyer, 2002), participants can be described in “rich, thick description” (geertz, 1973, p. 3) which has come to be known as the hallmark of good qualitative research.

All BGMUs in the study reported varied experiences with subtle and overt forms of racism while living in campus RHs . Approximately 70% of participants identified their roommate as the primary perpetrator of such acts and, virtually in all cases, the perpetrators were White male peers who lived on campus .

Data Analysis
interview data were analyzed in three stages using the constant comparison method, as described by strauss (1995) and strauss and corbin (1998). First, transcripts were read and re-read to generate initial categories of information or codes that represented “an initial plot of the terrain” (miles & Huberman, 1994, p. 69); this is known as open coding (strauss & corbin). coding is the process of “organizing the material into ‘chunks’ before bringing meaning to those chunks” (rossman & rallis, 1998, p. 171). next, codes were collapsed by grouping categories that seemed to relate to each other while leaving intact those that stood independent from all others. this smaller list of categories was used to generate supercodes, or preliminary themes. lastly, themes were compared and contrasted to understand the degree to which they were similar; closely

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The Journal of College and universiTy sTudenT housing

The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 38, No. 2 & Volume 39, No. 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 38, No. 2 & Volume 39, No. 1