Likes attract: Students self-sort in a classroom by gender, demography, and academic characteristics

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Freeman ◽  
Roddy Theobald ◽  
Alison J Crowe ◽  
Mary Pat Wenderoth

Although a growing literature has documented the effectiveness of informal group work during class sessions, virtually no data exist on which students are collaborating. As a result, instructors rarely know whether students are self-sorting in ways that maximize learning. This article explores which undergraduate students worked together on each of five exercises scheduled throughout the term, in a large-enrollment course for majors that emphasized intensive peer interaction. Pairwise logistic regression models were used to assess the likelihood that students collaborated based on shared demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, and academic performance. In almost all cases, students self-sorted by ethnicity and gender. In addition, students who were predicted to do well in the course, based on their academic history, worked together initially; students who actually did well in the course, based on their final grade, were working together at the end; and students who were predicted to struggle in the course began collaborating late in the term.

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S591-S591
Author(s):  
Grace A Noppert

Abstract There is compelling evidence to suggest that educational disparities in health differ by both race and gender. This study examines the relationship between respondents’ education and six health outcomes related to cardiometabolic and inflammatory outcomes using data from Wave IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (ages 24-32 years; N = 13,458). We used logistic regression models to examine the relationship between education and the odds of each health outcome. Models were stratified by race and gender. We found that the association between education and each health outcome differed by race/ethnicity and gender. While among whites we observed an association between education and each health outcome, for blacks we observed no such associations. It may be that the benefits of education are particularly salient for those in more structurally advantaged positions, pointing to the continued need to address structural inequalities by both gender and race.


2004 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Ferguson ◽  
Charles Negy

Using an experimental analog design, in this study we examined 503 European American, African American, and Latino undergraduate students’ responses to a domestic violence scenario in which the ethnicity and gender of the perpetrator were manipulated. Results indicated that participants perceived perpetration of domestic assault significantly more criminal when committed by a man than when committed by a woman. That finding was robust across European Americans, African Americans, and Latinos and was expressed by both genders. Also, European American participants expressed significantly more criticism toward African American perpetrators of assault than they did toward European American and Latino perpetrators of the exact offense, suggestive of racial bias consistent with stereotypes about African Americans being excessively aggressive. Finally, Latino participants expressed significantly more sympathy toward women who assault their husbands than toward assaulting husbands. Implications of the findings are discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 63S-70S
Author(s):  
Cynthia Trawick ◽  
Thema Monroe-White ◽  
Michael Joseph ◽  
NyThea Campbell Tolbert ◽  
Jigsa Tola ◽  
...  

Background. Mentoring and immersive experiences through internships are important means of increasing underrepresented (UR) students’ persistence in public health. However, while the positive effects of mentoring are well established, studies on the effect of race/ethnicity and gender mentor matching on persistence have produced mixed results. Aims. This article investigates the impact of homogeneous and heterogeneous mentor–mentee pairs on UR intern persistence for Project Imhotep, a summer internship program at Morehouse College. Method. The authors employ multivariable logistic regression analyses to examine the relationship between mentor and mentee race/ethnicity and gender characteristics on undergraduate intern academic persistence and career attainment. Results. Mentor demographics and institution type are predictors associated with intern academic and career persistence; however, the predictive importance of model attributes varied by outcome. Mentees paired with UR mentors (female or male) were more likely to attend graduate school, and mentees mentored by female mentors (UR female or White female) were more likely to pursue a graduate degree in public health. Finally, mentees mentored by UR females had the highest likelihood of either pursuing a graduate degree in public health or a public health career. Discussion. This article advances our understanding of how mentor–mentee race/ethnicity and gender affects the recruitment and retention of undergraduate students from racially and ethnically UR populations into public health. Conclusions. The findings suggest that the degree of shared racial/ethnic and/or gender identity between a public health intern and mentor influenced the likelihood of the intern pursuing further education or a public health career.


2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (5) ◽  
pp. 801-827 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danya Lagos

This study examines the link between self-rated health and two aspects of gender: an individual’s gender identity, and whether strangers classify that person’s voice as male or female. In a phone-based general health survey, interviewers classified the sex of transgender women ( n = 722) and transgender men ( n = 446) based on assumptions they made after hearing respondents’ voices. The flawed design of the original survey produced inconsistent sex classification among transgender men and transgender women respondents; this study repurposes these discrepancies to look more closely at the implications of voice-based gender classification for the health of transgender men and women. Average marginal effects from logistic regression models show transgender men who are classified as women based on their voices are more likely to report poor self-rated health compared to transgender men who are classified as men. Conversely, transgender women who are classified as men are less likely to report poor self-rated health than are transgender women who are classified as women. Additionally, Black transgender men are more likely than any other group to be classified inconsistently with their gender identity, suggesting a link between race/ethnicity and gender perception.


2010 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 573-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
D'ANN R. PENNER

This essay critiques the trauma literature that includes African Americans who endured Hurricane Katrina's aftermath. It is concerned with possible dissonance between scholars' and subjects' agendas. Drawing on narratives from the the Saddest Days Oral History Project that Penner directed in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, she explores divergences between the most urgent traumatic concerns of her study's narrators and the dominant questions of Katrina mental health literature. Her focus is the survivors' perceptions of rescuers' intentions, a primary consideration in the assessment of potentially traumatizing events. The mental-health specialists, with minor exceptions, correctly predicted an overall surge in traumatic and depressive symptoms for Hurricane Katrina survivors. They were less effective in identifying causation, specifying type, and appreciating major differences between social groups and communities. For almost all of the African American narrators trapped in the city after the storm, the trauma of Katrina was experienced as the product of human beings, mainly armed law enforcement personnel and soldiers, brandishing assault rifles, acting disdainfully, and separating families. The event was made cataclysmic not by the winds or the floodwaters but by their descent into a militarized zone in which narrators seemed singled out for persecution because of their race/ethnicity (and gender). The traumatizing events that were omitted from the structured interview protocols, in particular the impact of the militarized response, have had the deepest impact on survivors' identity and ability to trust others.


Mind Shift ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 261-277
Author(s):  
John Parrington

This chapter discusses how the structure of current society is relevant to discussions about human brain function. One feature of the human brain that might explain why many working people can accept and even acquiesce in their state of exploitation, and even sometimes see other workers as the primary threat, rather than as allies in campaigns for better pay and conditions at work, is the way our brains have evolved to respond to living in a potentially hostile natural environment. There is increasing evidence that many unconscious fears about a perceived threat of people of a different skin colour, sexual persuasion, or even male fears about female equality, involve the amygdala. Because of this, although inflammatory speeches by politicians or media articles may enhance such fears, thereby dividing people who have much to gain by working together for better pay and conditions, they are helped by being able to trigger deep-seated impulses in the human brain. Ultimately, the divisions in current society, by ethnicity and gender as well as class, exert a heavy toll on mental health. This chapter also looks at the phenomenon of alienation, and how this both affects our relationship to modern society and is linked to our wider state of self-conscious awareness.


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