Are University Communities Deeply Divided over the Value of Diversity on Campus? Understanding Students’ Preferences via Conjoint Analysis

56 Pages Posted: 6 May 2016 Last revised: 13 Mar 2017

See all articles by Madeline Brown

Madeline Brown

Dartmouth College

John M. Carey

Dartmouth College

Katherine Clayton

Stanford University; Dartmouth College

Yusaku Horiuchi

Dartmouth College - Department of Government

Lauren Martin

Dartmouth College

Date Written: March 10, 2017

Abstract

The issue of diversity on university campuses is now highly politicized in the United States. This paper advances our understanding of student attitudes toward this contentious issue using fully randomized conjoint analysis, a method recently developed to measure multidimensional preferences underlying choices. Based on campus-wide surveys of undergraduate students at Dartmouth College, one of the universities frequently in the news on diversity-related protests and conflicts, we show broad support for prioritizing diversity in faculty recruitment and undergraduate admissions. The estimated preferences for diversity vary across groups but, contrary to what some media coverage suggests, we find no evidence of polarization in opinions among students with regard to their preferences to increase faculty members and students with traditionally underrepresented attributes.

Keywords: race and ethnicity, gender, diversity, conjoint analysis, social desirability bias

JEL Classification: C42, C91, I20, I21, I29

Suggested Citation

Brown, Madeline and Carey, John Michael and Clayton, Katherine and Horiuchi, Yusaku and Martin, Lauren, Are University Communities Deeply Divided over the Value of Diversity on Campus? Understanding Students’ Preferences via Conjoint Analysis (March 10, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2775464 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2775464

Madeline Brown

Dartmouth College ( email )

Department of Sociology
Hanover, NH 03755
United States

John Michael Carey

Dartmouth College ( email )

Department of Sociology
Hanover, NH 03755
United States
603 646 1130 (Phone)
603 646 2154 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~jcarey

Katherine Clayton

Stanford University ( email )

Stanford, CA 94305
United States

Dartmouth College ( email )

Hanover, NH 03755
United States

Yusaku Horiuchi (Contact Author)

Dartmouth College - Department of Government ( email )

204 Silsby Hall
HB 6108
Hanover, NH 03755
United States

HOME PAGE: http://horiuchi.org

Lauren Martin

Dartmouth College ( email )

Department of Sociology
Hanover, NH 03755
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
340
Abstract Views
2,124
Rank
161,061
PlumX Metrics