Preference of Diversity Frame When Choosing Universities among Chinese High School Students

This study seeks to examine the relationship between Chinese high school students’ schooling abroad experience and their preference for instrumental or moral diversity frame, and further explore the mediation mechanism. In the present study, we take schooling abroad experience as the independent variable, and take attending preference of university with moral or instrumental diversity frame as the dependent variable. We have two sets of mediators: the first set of mediators are perceived minority/majority based on past experience and severity of unfair/biased experience based on nationality, and the second set of mediators are expected value, sense of belonging and possibility of being treated with bias in two universities. We send out questionnaires to 100 Chinese high school students. The statistical methods used in our analysis were ANOVA, correlation, and regression. The results are partly contrary to our expectation as there was no significant relationship between schooling abroad experience and preference of diversity frames, as well as severity of unfair/biased experience. The only validated path is between perceived minority/majority and preference of diversity frames, which is mediated by participants’ expected sense of belonging and possibility of being treated with bias at the instrumentally motivated university. Then, we explain our results considering status of Asian Americans in the United States, adjustment and some other aspects.