Multicultural Competence of Student Affairs Administrators at Member Institutions of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if statistically significant relationships existed between multicultural competence and a series of independent variables among select student affairs administrators at member institutions of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Specifically, this study sought to examine personal and institutional variables such as race, age, gender, professional level in student affairs, years’ experience, location of current institution, levels of diversity training, and the existence of diversity-based resources, such as an office of diversity, a chief diversity officer, or a diversity/multicultural mission statement. Participants were administered the Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs-Preliminary 2 (MCSA-P2) instrument (Pope & Mueller, 2000) and a participant questionnaire created by the researcher. Participants for this study included 115 student affairs administrators among 33 Christian colleges and universities in 17 states. A simple linear regression was conducted to determine relationships among multicultural competence and eight independent variables. The analysis determined that three variables--race, diversity training, and professional level were significantly linked to multicultural competence (p < .05). The variables of age and years’ experience were not significantly related. Additionally, although not significantly related to multicultural competence, the variables of gender (p = .075) and geographic location (p = .063) approached significance.