The survey data used in this project is from two larger overarching projects titled the Rice Preferences Study and the Black Student Success Study. The Rice Preferences Study began with a sample of 661 entering undergraduates matriculating in August of 2016. This was 66.7% of the entering class, randomly selected. Of that sample, 553 completed the study with an 83.7% response rate. Prior to coming to campus in fall 2016 Rice students were given a battery of incentivized preference measures including risk aversion, loss aversion, altruism, in-group favoritism, time discounting, competitiveness, and so on. Over the subsequent four years that group was tested with new and repeated measures, in two to four tests per year.
As a basis for comparison, each year a smaller sample (between 112 And 148) was drawn from incoming classes and tested with the same instruments. The remaining students from the Class of 2020 who had never been tested were invited in March 2020 to complete the initial study (259 of 376 completed the study). In March 2020, as Rice University closed, the team joined together to build a COVID module for the long-term Rice panel, as well as the other members of the Class of 2020. A total of 670 participated in this wave (67.1% of the graduating class). The Black Student Success Study recruited samples from PVAMU and TAMU in 2017 and again in 2019. This study aimed at understanding the effects of stereotype threat on Black student success in two different university environments in Texas: PVAMU, a historically Black university with about 9,000 students, 65% female, and 83% Black; and TAMU, a large state university with about 70,000 students, 47% female and 3.7% Black. That study was ongoing in 2020 when COVID struck. A total of 880 subjects responded to the initial survey out of a total of 3,709 who were contacted. Black subjects were over-sampled at TAMU, and constituted 37% of the TAMU sample. Respondents completed a one-hour survey that included measures of identity, non-cognitive skills, stereotype-threat vulnerability, and controls for economic preferences (survey measures) and family background. They were paid $20 for completing the study. In March 2020 additional funding was awarded through NSF to expand and follow the Rice, TAMU and PVAMU panels, focusing on the impact of COVID-19.
