Diversity learning · Advanced

Intergroup Contact: Conditions, Power, and Unintended Effects

Design meaningful cooperation across difference while attending to power, voluntary participation, and the limits of contact as an equity strategy.

About 56 minutes, plus optional practice · 4 lessons · Voluntary learning

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All diversity courses: Foundation, Intermediate, and Advanced

Course outline

Distinguish proximity from meaningful contact
Explain why sharing a room is not a complete contact intervention.
14 minutes
Account for power inside and outside the encounter
Map authority that remains outside a shared activity.
14 minutes
Build a cooperative task with meaningful differences
Design a shared task requiring distinct contributions.
14 minutes
Review effects beyond a pleasant encounter
Separate participant experience from changes in practice.
14 minutes

Share this course

What you’ll be able to do

Explore and practice

Explain why sharing a room is not a complete contact intervention.
Map authority that remains outside a shared activity.
Design a shared task requiring distinct contributions.
Separate participant experience from changes in practice.

What you can take into your work

Explain the reasoning behind a response to each fictional case.
Use the course job aid to propose an observable change and a way to review it.

Write a follow-up covering the shared product, participation conditions, unresolved concerns, and next responsibility.

Read the introduction

Design meaningful cooperation across difference while attending to power, voluntary participation, and the limits of contact as an equity strategy.

Intergroup Contact: Conditions, Power, and Unintended Effects — practice guide

A working aid for examining a decision, preparing a response, and checking what changed.

Design meaningful cooperation across difference while attending to power, voluntary participation, and the limits of contact as an equity strategy.

Keep evidence, interpretation, and proposed action distinct.
Use authorized work records only; keep private learning responses out of personnel records.
A course exercise does not replace formal policy, complaint procedures, professional assessment, or decision authority.

Write a follow-up covering the shared product, participation conditions, unresolved concerns, and next responsibility.

Set the purpose

Name the shared task and what can change.
Identify meaningful contributions without assigning identity representatives.
Distinguish social connection from an evaluated intervention.

Design conditions

Provide accessible materials and adequate time.
Map authority inside and outside the activity.
Preserve choice about personal disclosure and routes for disagreement.
Prepare a response to stereotyping or other harmful conduct.

Review responsibly

Examine the product and participation conditions separately.
Do not equate enjoyment with durable change.
Assign ownership to unresolved structural concerns.
Continue, revise, or replace the format based on evidence and participant burden.

Complete a practice record

Decision or situation: describe one concrete example and the specific part within your responsibility.
Evidence: record the observed sequence and identify what is still uncertain; do not include private course reflections or unnecessary personal details.
Proposed action: Write a follow-up covering the shared product, participation conditions, unresolved concerns, and next responsibility.
Review: name the person responsible, an appropriate review date, and the evidence that would support continuing, revising, or stopping the change.
Return the result: explain what changed and why to the people who need that information, using an appropriate authorized channel.

Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.

Sources and further reading

Pettigrew and Tropp (2006), A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory
Abstract and citation record. Research synthesis supports attention to contact conditions; it does not guarantee the result of a particular workshop.
Paluck, Green, and Green (2019), The contact hypothesis re-evaluated
Review of randomized studies with delayed outcomes, including important limits on generalization.
Tropp and Pettigrew (2005), Relationships between intergroup contact and prejudice among minority and majority status groups
Abstract and citation record. Research on differing relationships across group status; used to prompt examination of unequal benefits and burdens.
Pettigrew and Tropp (2006), full article
University-hosted full research article for optional methods and evidence reading.

All research and sources across the program

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