Assessing the Impact of Intergroup Contact and Diversity training on Employers’ Hiring Attitudes, Intentions and Behaviours Toward Refugees

Boss, Harrison

Assessing the Impact of Intergroup Contact and Diversity training on Employers’ Hiring Attitudes, Intentions and Behaviours Toward Refugees

dc.contributor.advisor	MacInnis, Cara C.
dc.contributor.author	Boss, Harrison
dc.contributor.committeemember	Murry, Adam Thomas
dc.contributor.committeemember	Bourdage, Joshua S.
dc.date	2019-11
dc.date.accessioned	2019-09-10T21:22:15Z
dc.date.available	2019-09-10T21:22:15Z
dc.date.issued	2019-09-10
dc.description.abstract	The aims of this research project are to examine the impact of intergroup contact and diversity training on the general attitudes, hiring attitudes, hiring intentions, and hiring behaviour toward refugees among hirers residing in the United States. Hirers are operationalized as individuals with the final authority to make hiring decisions within their organizations. Refugees are a vulnerable and disadvantaged social group who face a number of barriers to successful employment. Studies exploring refugees in employment contexts are exceedingly rare, but integral to understanding refugee employment outcomes. Based on previous literature, two mediators for why intergroup contact and diversity training may impact attitudes toward social groups were examined: group empathy and intergroup anxiety. A sample of hirers (N = 379) was recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk using a two-step methodology, with the goal of increasing data quality through the reduction of participant misrepresentation. Intergroup contact quantity, intergroup contact quality and diversity training all were associated with general attitudes toward refugees, with intergroup contact quantity/quality both being fully mediated by empathy and intergroup anxiety. The impact of diversity training on general attitudes was fully mediated only by group empathy. When comparing the predictors simultaneously, intergroup contact quality appears to have the strongest relationship on most hiring outcomes. However, hiring intentions were not found to predict hiring behaviour toward refugees. Several explanations for this are explored. Nonetheless, this research provides valuable contributions to knowledge surrounding intergroup contact theory and diversity training, and their relations with hiring of disadvantaged social groups, specifically refugees. Future research on this topic should explore these variables experimentally, to help establish causality and temporal directionality of these variables.	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Boss, H. (2019). Assessing the Impact of Intergroup Contact and Diversity training on Employers’ Hiring Attitudes, Intentions and Behaviours Toward Refugees (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.	en_US
dc.identifier.doi	http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/36980
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1880/110908
dc.language.iso	eng	en_US
dc.publisher.faculty	Arts	en_US
dc.publisher.institution	University of Calgary	en
dc.rights	University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.	en_US
dc.subject	psychology, intergroup contact, diversity training, refugees	en_US
dc.subject.classification	Psychology--Industrial	en_US
dc.subject.classification	Psychology--Personality	en_US
dc.subject.classification	Psychology--Social	en_US
dc.title	Assessing the Impact of Intergroup Contact and Diversity training on Employers’ Hiring Attitudes, Intentions and Behaviours Toward Refugees	en_US
dc.type	master thesis	en_US
thesis.degree.discipline	Psychology	en_US
thesis.degree.grantor	University of Calgary	en_US
thesis.degree.name	Master of Science (MSc)	en_US
ucalgary.item.requestcopy	true	en_US