Diversity: About the Project[login] The Diversity Tracking project is aimed at evaluating how well BYUH succeeds in helping students diversify from their initial small circle of friends and culture to the broader world culture represented on campus. The hypothesis is that new students mostly limit their voluntary interactions (such as study group membership) to others from the same ethnic or cultural heritage as themselves. This clustering can be measured. As students are forced to work together on school projects or in non-school activities, their voluntary interactions will take in a larger and larger group.The project was launched in 2007. The Principal Investigators on this project are Craig Allen from the School of Business and Don Colton from the School of Computing at Brigham Young University Hawaii. To track associations between students there are three main tables of information. The PEOPLE table assigns a private serial number to each student or other person being tracked. As new memberships are entered, the PEOPLE table allows us to make the right associations, but when results are calculated we can specifically avoid using the PEOPLE table so we can preserve confidentiality. The GROUP table lists the groups to which PEOPLE can belong. The word "group" is taken very broadly, and can include ethnic groups, clubs, class groups, church groups, study groups, project teams, and other groupings. Groups can be long-term or short-term. The MEMBERSHIP table consists of pairs of (PEOPLE,GROUP) membership information to indicate that the person (identified by number) is a member of the group (identified by another number).
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