Youth Leadership, Racism, and Intergroup Dialogue

The National Conference for Community and Justice-Greater Kansas City's Youth Leadership Institute (Anytown) for high school-aged youth-is designed to expose young people to multicultural issues and topics and facilitate purposeful intergroup dialogue on addressing systemic oppression and privilege. An evaluation was conducted over a three-year period to determine whether the Anytown programming had an effect on changing the knowledge and attitudes of participants concerning a variety of racial/ethnic groups. At the beginning of the first day of the 7-day residential institute and again at the end of the last day, the students completed a self-report survey rating a series of statements concerning their knowledge and attitudes. At the end of each day, the students also answered open-ended questions concerning what they had learned during the day. Frequencies, t-tests, ANOVA comparisons, and content analyses were conducted. In every areameasured by the pre- and post-Institute surveys, there was a statistically significant positive change, at the 95% or higher confidence level, in respondents' ratings of their knowledge and attitudes. (C) 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.