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Stigma?

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a new survey of students at seven law schools that purports to show that beneficiaries of affirmative action preferences do not feel stigmatized.

The article points out, at least to my satisfaction, that there were too few respondents for the results to be meaningful:

42 percent of students at the four law schools in the study that used affirmative-action preferences in admissions, and 27 percent of students at three law schools that did not....

... only 32 black, 17 Latino, 40 Asian-American, 31 multiracial, and 14 ?other race? students, leading to very small sample sizes when the results were divided by school.

There are also other, more severe problems, such as questions such as ?"I do not deserve to be a student at my law school because I took the spot of a more deserving student? and ?My classmates treat me as though I were admitted solely because of affirmative action.?

Joseph W. Doherty, who directs empirical research for the law school at the University of California at Los Angeles, said in an interview on Tuesday that he believes the survey instrument used in the study was fatally flawed in that it begins by explicitly telling students the study?s purpose ?is to conduct research on race-based affirmative action in higher education and its relationship to stigma that may be felt by individual students who identify as a member of underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups.?

Such language ?really just spits in the test tube? by steering students toward certain answers, Mr. Doherty said.

One finding of the survey, presented deadpan in the Chronicle article, actually seems to me to say more than the survey authors hoped:

The survey found strong support among all survey respondents for the idea that diversity enhances education. Students at the schools without affirmative-action preferences were even more likely to believe diversity has benefits than students at schools with such preferences, but they were less likely than students at schools with preferences to believe affirmative action constitutes reverse discrimination against white people or men, or gives preferences to unqualified students.

So, students at schools that employ racial preferences are less likely to believe that ?diversity? has benefits and more likely to believe that it constitutes reverse discrimination than students at preference-free schools.

That, of course, is not surprising, since they should know.

Full post as published by Discriminations on October 10, 2008 (boomark / email).