Attitudes of resident assistants toward homosexuality and gay and lesbian students a study at a southeastern research university /

by 1973- Smith, Melissa Scandlyn

This purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes of resident assistants at a large southeastern research university towards homosexuality and gay and lesbian students, as well as about the training they received on dealing with the issues that these students face. Attitudes in this descriptive census study were collected from 133 respondents by the distribution of a quantitative survey that utilized a Likert scale. In addition to their attitudes, the resident assistants were also asked to provide their gender, the amount of prior experience they had with lesbians or gay males, and the number of years they had been a resident assistant. Chi square analysis was performed to determine if there were any statistically significant relationships between the RAs attitudes and the demographic categories. Though two of the three variables included had been significant in other studies, there was little relation here between attitudes and gender, prior interactions with lesbians or gay males, or years of experience as an RA. The mean scores indicated that as a whole, the sample was neutral to somewhat positive towards lesbians and gay males, but when the mean scores were used in conjunction with the demographic variable chi squares, there were many participants who felt strongly negative about homosexuality. In addition to the discussion of attitudes, recommendations for improvements to the resident assistant training program, provided by both the participants and the researcher, and suggestions for further research are included. iii