Human Relations Commissions by Valerie Martinez-Ebers

Author:Valerie Martinez-Ebers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press

TREATMENT EFFECTS: PERCEIVING INTERGROUP SIMILARITY

Again, post hoc analysis of the differences between the treatment and control responses for the dependent variable—intergroup commonality—shows the experiment’s statistical power (i.e., the ability for the analysis to distinguish statistically significant effects) at .90 (p < .01). Additionally, a qualitative review of subjects’ answers to an open-ended question included on the survey questionnaire suggests that subjects were not aware of the purpose of the randomized treatment statements, and regressions on the treatment variables indicate treatment assignment was not predicted by subjects’ sex, race, income, age, income, or partisanship (results not shown).46

We move now to an assessment of treatment effects on respondents in terms of the survey’s intergroup perception measures. The question measures respondent perception of how much in common people feel they have with those in other ethnic and racial groups and reads as follows: “Thinking about things like government services, political power, and representation, how much does your racial or ethnic group have in common with other groups in Los Angeles today? Would you say your group has a lot in common, some in common, little in common, or nothing at all in common with [African Americans, Asian Americans, Anglos, Latinos]?”47 Given the strong LAHRC emphasis on convincing residents of different identities that they have a mutual or common stake in the health of their neighborhoods and communities, the intergroup commonality perception measure is a good place to start in testing the effectiveness of LAHRC strategies for improving intergroup relations. And the use of random assignment in our design enables us to disentangle the direction of effect in encouraging intergroup commonality perception.

In examining the frequency distribution of the dependent variables among our subjects in figures 5.1–5.3, we see that a plurality of Anglos feel some degree of perceived political commonality with African Americans, Asians, and Latinos, with a clear majority of Anglos saying they have either “some” or “a lot” in common (politically) with the other racial and ethnic groups. Latino subject perceptions displayed in figures 5.2 show the same general response pattern (although the combined percentages of those saying they perceive “some” or “a lot” politically in common with other groups are slightly lower than among whites). Still, the overall response distribution suggests that our subjects are willing to view ethnic and racial out-group as sharing political interests and needs. Meanwhile, African American respondents in figure 5.3 reveal a clearer pattern of perceived political commonality toward Latinos, although they also view Anglos and Asians as having a general degree of commonality. In other words, none of the three groups of subjects expressed an overly strong sense that they do not find political commonality with other racial and ethnic groups. In some ways, then, this makes the confirmations of our initial research expectation more difficult in that there may be a “ceiling” effect whereby the assigned treatment cues are unable to move subjects to increased levels of perceived commonality.

FIGURE 5.1

Anglo Perceived Commonality, n = 419

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