The sample frame was constructed over several months through the combined efforts of three graduate students and Prof. Larry W. Bowman. Using the Internet whenever possible, and backed by the assistance of colleagues from many institutions, we constructed a sample frame of 1,793 U.S.-based Africanists. Our sample frame includes 46 percent more Africanists than the 1,229 individual U.S. members of the African Studies Association (ASA) in 2001 (1,112 individual members and 117 lifetime members). In all cases we allowed institutions to self-define who they considered their African studies faculty to be. By assembling this broad sample frame of African studies faculty, we probe more deeply into the national world of African studies than can be done even through a membership survey of our largest and most established national African studies organization. The sample frame for this study approximates a full enumeration of the Africanist population in the United States. Therefore, data collected from samples drawn from this frame can with some confidence be generalized to all Africanists in the United States, with minimal coverage error.
Self-segregation, sense of belonging, and social support: An inquiry into the practices and perceptions of Chinese graduate students at an American Mid-Atlantic University
