Empathy through Data? Student Exploration of Elements of Diversity through Projects in an Introductory Statistics Course

A project involving data related to socioeconomic indicators was administered in an introductory statistics course. As part of this project, student groups investigated a data set from the United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service website with information on recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. Pre/post data from the Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale (M-GUDS) short form were collected to measure changes in diversity awareness. The survey administered also included demographic information and open-ended questions. Based on study results (n = 48), there was moderate evidence of a change in the "diversity of contact" subscale of the M-GUDS short form. Written feedback indicated that students demonstrated empathy for individuals with potentially different lived experiences. The focus of this paper is to describe the study results and provide information on the importance of incorporating elements of diversity into curriculum.