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Description
The prevalence of workplace discrimination is a serious and costly problem for organizations. Beyond the high costs of settling or defending legal cases, organizations also face less-visible costs associated with discrimination, such as decreased productivity and organizational withdrawal. To mitigate the negative effects of discrimination, organizations often conduct anti-discrimination training with the assumption that it will reduce the incidence of workplace discrimination. However, this assumption has not been tested across studies of anti-discrimination training effectiveness. The purpose of the study is to conduct a meta-analytic review of the effectiveness of workplace anti-discrimination training (operationalized as diversity awareness training and sexual harassment awareness training), as indicated by a variety of training outcome types. When there was sufficient variance to model, potential moderators were examined. A literature search yielded 38 studies that met the inclusion criteria. The total sample size for all the studies is 364,828 (M = 9,601). Each study was coded for a number of variables by two independent raters. A comparison of the training interventions versus control groups was conducted using standardized mean differences (Cohens d). The vast majority of ds across all training outcome types were positive, which indicates that training overall had the desired effects on training outcomes. Moderator analysis revealed that that sexual harassment awareness training has a larger effect on outcomes as compared to diversity awareness training, especially when looking at specific training outcomes. In the analysis of study design as a moderator, larger effect sizes were found for studies that had a pre-test/post-test design as compared to a training/control group, post-test only design. In addition, these results did not support a moderating effect of the research setting (lab versus field) on training outcomes. Although it appears that anti-discrimination training is heading in a positive direction, further research is needed to determine the specific factors that influence the effectiveness of training.
