The behavioural self-regulation strategies of Indian South African students as minority group on a university campus

[摘要] There seems to be a gap in the literature on the psychological experiences of Indian SouthAfrican (ISA) students as a racial minority in South African university contexts. The aims of thisstudy are therefore to: (a) identify the typical thoughts, emotions and actions of a sample of ISAstudents in response to their status as a racial minority group on a university campus; to (b)explore the self-regulation strategies they employ in response to these thoughts, emotions andactions; and to (c) determine the perceived cause-and-effect relationships between thesethoughts, emotions, actions and the subsequent self-regulation strategies.This study employed interactive qualitative analysis (IQA: Northcutt & McCoy, 2004), amethod based on the principles of action research, grounded theory, and concept mapping. Theessential aim of IQA is to develop a hypothetical model to show the perceived cause-and-effectrelationships of participants' experiences. A non-probability sample of eight full-time ISAcontact students on a historically White South African university campus was recruited byputting up an advertisement across the campus after ethical approval was received.Eight themes were identified, namely (1) unwanted emotions; (2) introspection; (3)engaging interpersonally; (4) managing the situation; (5) making friends with people from otherraces; (6) tolerance; (7) feeling overwhelmed; and (8) being judged for being different. Ahypothetical cause-and-effect model was then developed according to IQA guidelines. Themodel shows that participants respond with unwanted emotions (e.g. anger and sadness) whenthey experience that they are being judged for being different. Participants then feeloverwhelmed by these emotions and this is followed by attempts at introspection, engaging withtrusted others, and results in a sense of having to manage the situation. Two feedback loops areinvolved in this process: the first includes tolerance of the experience of being judged, which eventually feeds back into introspection, and the second includes deliberate attempts to makefriends with people from other racial groups, which feeds back into engagement with trustedothers.This study supports previous research regarding the importance of race in South Africanuniversity students' experience of discrimination and socialisation, as well as the significance ofsocial support as an adaptive strategy. The study also shows that IQA is a valuable method whenexploring self-regulation in a social context as it contributed to a better understanding of theparticipants' perceived relationship between being judged, their available resources and thedifferent self-regulation strategies they used as a racial minority on a university campus.Limitations of the study pertain to the relatively small sample and lack of generalisabilityof the findings. However, the model provided new hypotheses that need further exploration. Assuch, further research has to explore among other things the validity of this model, theexperiences of minorities other than ISAs, if ISAs cross-group interactions may lead to lowerrace-based sensitivity (RS) and how self-regulation influences perceptions of being judged

[发布机构] North-West University