Project WERD Replication
Creators: name: Tittler, Meredith V.
Publisher: name: OSF Registries
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Counseling
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology

description: Pre-registration Project WERD - Replication: NOTE: This pre-registration is post-data collection but, pre-data analysis. What is the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study? Background: This study was developed as a replication and extension of the Tittler and Wade (2019) study that assessed factors of a racial dialogue that may impact White participants’ engagement. The original study assessed the effects of two factors that may have an impact on White students’ participation and engagement in a racial dialogue: the use of ground-rules in the dialogue (e.g., structure) and the racial makeup of the group. The authors assessed the effect of these factors in the context of a “high controversy” dialogue topic (i.e., Black Lives Matter) and a “low controversy” dialogue topic (i.e., minority-only scholarships). Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 vignette conditions that described a racial dialogue that varied on the use of ground-rules (the facilitator introduced ground rules vs. did not mention ground-rules) and racial makeup of the group (an all-White vs. mixed-race group). All participants were exposed to the conversation topic of Black Lives Matter and minority-only scholarship, which were presented in a random order. Participants were asked to write their honest thoughts about both topics and then rate how likely they would be to share these thoughts with the group. They were also asked how likely they would be to sign-up for a similar dialogue group and whether they would like to receive information about dialogue groups happening on campus. The authors originally hypothesized that White people would be more likely to share their honest thoughts, have more interest in participating in a similar group, and be more likely to indicate wanting to receive information on similar groups if they were in the structured and all-White condition. Furthermore, it was predicted that these effects would be more pronounced in the high-controversy topic (Black Lives Matter) compared to the low-controversy topic (minority-only scholarships). The hypotheses were based on previous research that suggests that adding structure to a group, such as the use of ground rules, can reduce anxiety in group members (e.g., Stockton et al., 1992). It was also based on research that suggests White people experience and demonstrate signs of anxiety when discussing racial issues with people of color (e.g., Sue, 2013). Therefore, it was theorized that the condition that would produce the least anxiety would be the all-White group with structure (i.e., ground rules) which the authors predicted would result in participants reporting more engagement and more interest in signing-up for these groups. The results, however, did not fully support these hypotheses. The authors found a significant 3-way interaction between structure, racial-makeup of the group, and level of controversy of the topic. There was a significant interaction between structure of the group and racial-makeup of the group in the high-controversy topic, but not the low-controversy topic. In the high controversy topic, the use of ground-rules increased reported sharing of one’s honest thoughts if the group was mixed-race, but had the opposite effect if the group was all-White. There was a significant main-effect of structure (the use of ground rules) for likelihood to sign-up for a similar group. The moderation effect between group structure and racial-make-up was approaching significance (p=.07) for this outcome. There was no main effect or interaction effect for the outcome of desire to receive information about similar groups, though the interaction effect between group structure and racial make-up was also approaching significance (p =.07). One reason a replication of this study is warranted is to assess the possible history effects on the outcomes given the unique time in history the data-sets were collected - the first data-set was collected prior to the “racial reckoning” of 2020 (e.g., Quarcoo &amp; Husakovic, 2021) in the months leading up to and following the 2016 presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The current data was collected in the fall of 2020, following the racial reckoning and the surge of the Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd (e.g., Quarcoo &amp; Husakovic, 2021). This was also in the months leading up to and immediately following the 2020 presidential election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. During this “racial reckoning” there were many calls for White people to do “their work” and educate themselves on their role in systemic racism without burdening people of color (e.g., Saliban, 2020). Grassroots racial-justice organizations such as the organization, SURJ (Showing up for Racial Justice), saw a large uptick in White people participating in their meetings and signing up for their White accountability groups (e.g., Saliban, 2020). There were books written about leading White affinity groups (e.g., DiAngelo &amp; Burtaine, 2022). However, despite the increase in calls for White people to participate in affinity groups or intragroup dialogues, we were unable to find any published studies investigating the effectiveness of these groups since this increase in public interest. The research on this topic prior to this time in history, was also sparse. The research on intergroup racial dialogues is more robust (e.g., Gurin et al., 2013) than the research on White intragroup dialogues or affinity groups, but there is still little published research that has investigated the impact of specific factors of an intergroup racial dialogue. Therefore, given the lack of previous research on the specific factors in both inter- and intragroup racial dialogues and the historical racial justice movement that transpired in the summer of 2020, a replication of this study is important to assess which effects replicate and whether any do not in the shifting socio-political climate. There were also outcomes that were approaching significance in the previous study (i.e., p-values of .07) that may have represented true effects that the original study was not powered to detect. A sensitivity analysis using G*Power (Faul et al., 2007) shows that the sample size of the current study would be sufficient to detect a small effect size of Cohen’s f =.13 with a power of .8. This suggests the current sample should have sufficient power to detect what would be considered a small effect if one exists. The previous study had a sample size of 256. We did a post-hoc power analysis using G*Power which showed a sample of that size would have a power of .44 to detect an effect size of Cohen’s f =.13, which suggests a small effect-size would likely not have been detected in this dataset.