Validation of the Term ‘Cultural Community’ in the Culturally Engaging Campus Environments Survey

Addressing issues of inequity and exclusion on college campuses requires a comprehensive assessment strategy inclusive of diverse student populations’ cultures and communities, as it is integral to understanding students and their environment. Developing instruments that can accurately and robustly measure student culture is necessary for campus leaders to contextualize their data. The purpose of this paper is to validate and describe the use of the term cultural community in the Culturally Engaging Campus Environments survey. We used cognitive interviewing to illicit racially and ethnically diverse students’ interpretations of the term and its use in the survey. Findings suggest that students’ interpretations are mitigated by larger societal and institutional discourses, although race was a common mitigating factor.