Measuring Diversity at a Historically Black College of Dentistry

Abstract

There are several excellent indices available to quantify diversity within a student body. Richness and evenness can be studied using Simpson’s Index with its associated Reciprocal Index, and with Shannon-Weiner’s Index “H” and Index “E”. Lieberson provides the means to measure isolation and interaction, and Dissimilarity works well to identify segregated communities. Results using these indices show that the Historically Black College of Dentistry is a culturally vibrant and diverse academic and social environment. White students at the Historically Black College of Dentistry are more likely to enjoy interaction with other Whites than will Historically Black and Hispanic students at all other dental schools, except at the other Medical College, the only other HBCU with a dental school. Overall, there was no statistical diversity difference between the Historically Black College of Dentistry and all other dental schools over the 10 year study period. Statistically significant correlations between each index provided a framework for using each index in prediction modeling. Recent methods to manage multi-collinearity, such as extracting unstandardized residuals to use as adjusted coefficients add promise that all indices can be used in future diversity studies.