Discrimination on College Campuses: Perceptions of Evangelical Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Students: A Secondary Data Analysis

Abstract

Religious and faith-based discrimination has been an overwhelming issue in American academies for time immemorial. This dissertation is a secondary data analysis that utilized the samples identifying as Evangelical Christian, Jewish, and Muslim. There were 1,166 Evangelical Christian participants, 182 Jewish participants, and 145 Muslim participants (N=1,493). The analysis looked at (a) campus attitudes towards and of the students surveyed, (b) how it influenced their perceptions of discrimination, (c) the correlation of feeling discriminated against in Time 2, and how that related to feeling discriminated against in Time 3, (d) the influence of insensitive comments from friends and peers, and (e) the influence of insensitive comments from faculty and (f) how that influenced their feeling of being discriminated against based on their faith in Time 2 and Time 3. The results showed statistically significant direct correlations between the perception of feeling discriminated against based on students’ faith in Time 2 to the perception of feeling discriminated against based on their faith in Time 3 (to varying extents), as well as how this is mediated by, or indirect correlations, of insensitive comments from faculty, and insensitive comments from friends and peers for each group at each time point analyzed.