Black Students' Perceptions of Prejudice and Grade Deflection.

The study presented here was designed to further the understanding of black student performance in biracial, academic settings. The purpose of the research was to assess the association between black students' perceptions of prejudice among white instructors and grade deflection (discrepancy between grade expected and grade received) in the respective courses. The first hypothesis was that there is a positive relationship between perceived instructor prejudice and incidence of grade deflection. Another hypothesis asserted that perceived prejudice is also positively related to grade deflection distance. The setting for the research was a Southern integrated university in one of the 20 largest cities in the U.S. Approximately 10 percent of the student body of just over 20,000 is black. During the Spring of 1971, all black students enrolled in sociology and anthropology courses completed questionnaires which provided the data for analyses. One hundred and ninety black students were asked their perceptions of racial prejudice among their respective instructors during the previous calendar year. Significant relationships were found between perceived instructor prejudice and both incidence of grade deflection and grade deflection distance. The controlled introduction of additional variables did not significantly alter the relationship. (Author/JM)