Page 191 - Ana Kozina and Nora Wiium, eds. ▪︎ Positive Youth Development in Contexts. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2021. Digital Library, Dissertationes (Scientific Monographs), 42.
P. 191
contact-based interventions to reduce ethnic prejudice ...
Effectiveness of different indirect contact interventions
Analysis of effectiveness for different indirect contact conditions shows
extended intergroup contact having small-to-moderate effects, imagined
intergroup contact having moderate-to-large effects, and vicarious inter-
group contact mainly having negligible-to-small effects (see Table 1).
The results show that imagined and extended contact can both be
highly efficacious if research is high in methodological quality and imple-
ments other factors supposedly connected to effective implementation (e.g.
the age appropriateness of the intervention) (Ülger et al., 2018). The im-
agined contact interventions included in this review are high in quality,
while the extended contact interventions’ quality varies, which could con-
tribute to such differences. A meta-analysis of 70 studies measuring im-
agined contact intervention effects reported a small effect on prejudice and
related outcomes (d+ = 0.35) (Miles & Crisp, 2013), suggesting our sample of
interventions was particularly efficacious. Nothing could be deduced about
vicarious contact interventions as this was implemented by only two stud-
ies of low methodological quality, which might add to its ineffectiveness
(Aboud et al., 2012; Beelmann & Heinemann, 2014; Ülger et al., 2018).
Another possible explanation is that extended and vicarious contact in-
terventions are simply more prone to being ineffective if certain conditions
are not met, such as perceived prototypicality of ingroup and outgroup peer
models or group salience (Brown & Hewstone, 2005). Accordingly, the re-
sults of Liebkind et al. (2013) show that vicarious contact intervention effec-
tiveness is related to the perceived group prototypicality of characters from
the story. Imagined contact may be more efficacious as participants are nat-
urally exposed to their own prototypical representations of outgroup mem-
bers during visualisation, meaning that this condition is automatically met.
Factors influencing the effectiveness of contact-based interventions
Characteristics of the target group: ethnic status
None of the interventions focused solely on ethnic minority students,
which led us to compare interventions with only ethnic majority partici-
pants against interventions with participants of ethnic minority and ma-
jority group memberships. Interventions with members of the ethnic
majority reported small-to-moderate effects, while interventions with eth-
nically-mixed participants reported small effects (see Table 1.). This is in
line with Ülger et al. (2018) who reported similar effect sizes for participants
191
Effectiveness of different indirect contact interventions
Analysis of effectiveness for different indirect contact conditions shows
extended intergroup contact having small-to-moderate effects, imagined
intergroup contact having moderate-to-large effects, and vicarious inter-
group contact mainly having negligible-to-small effects (see Table 1).
The results show that imagined and extended contact can both be
highly efficacious if research is high in methodological quality and imple-
ments other factors supposedly connected to effective implementation (e.g.
the age appropriateness of the intervention) (Ülger et al., 2018). The im-
agined contact interventions included in this review are high in quality,
while the extended contact interventions’ quality varies, which could con-
tribute to such differences. A meta-analysis of 70 studies measuring im-
agined contact intervention effects reported a small effect on prejudice and
related outcomes (d+ = 0.35) (Miles & Crisp, 2013), suggesting our sample of
interventions was particularly efficacious. Nothing could be deduced about
vicarious contact interventions as this was implemented by only two stud-
ies of low methodological quality, which might add to its ineffectiveness
(Aboud et al., 2012; Beelmann & Heinemann, 2014; Ülger et al., 2018).
Another possible explanation is that extended and vicarious contact in-
terventions are simply more prone to being ineffective if certain conditions
are not met, such as perceived prototypicality of ingroup and outgroup peer
models or group salience (Brown & Hewstone, 2005). Accordingly, the re-
sults of Liebkind et al. (2013) show that vicarious contact intervention effec-
tiveness is related to the perceived group prototypicality of characters from
the story. Imagined contact may be more efficacious as participants are nat-
urally exposed to their own prototypical representations of outgroup mem-
bers during visualisation, meaning that this condition is automatically met.
Factors influencing the effectiveness of contact-based interventions
Characteristics of the target group: ethnic status
None of the interventions focused solely on ethnic minority students,
which led us to compare interventions with only ethnic majority partici-
pants against interventions with participants of ethnic minority and ma-
jority group memberships. Interventions with members of the ethnic
majority reported small-to-moderate effects, while interventions with eth-
nically-mixed participants reported small effects (see Table 1.). This is in
line with Ülger et al. (2018) who reported similar effect sizes for participants
191
