2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The number of Multiracial people in the United States (US) continues to grow, and while the experiences of Multiracial students have been studied within higher education, there is a gap in knowledge of how the norms and expectations of engineering spaces impact Multiracial students. Engineering spaces were not made with Multiracial students in mind, and therefore, continuing in engineering majors can be difficult for these students. The first step towards helping Multiracial students in engineering is identifying their needs. However, it can be difficult to recognize which students identify with multiple races, especially when racial identity is often asked in different ways among surveys.

A pilot survey asked students to racially identify in two different ways with different question phrasing. These questions were based on literature regarding the different ways people identify their races based on how the question is asked. The second section of the pilot survey asked participants to review a list of potential events in a Multiracial person’s life and answer if they had experienced it, witnessed it, or were unaware of the event. The tenets in Critical Multiracial Theory (MultiCrit) were used to code the different events presented to the participants. MultiCrit is a theoretical framework based on Critical Race Theory (CRT) developed to further understand the experiences of Multiracial people.

Initial results indicate that students responded differently regarding their racial identification based on the phrasing of the questions. Responses about the potential events experienced by Multiracial people varied based on the race(s) declared by the participants in the study. The information from this study can be used to help understand how Multiracial students racially identify and help researchers consider how to be precise when asking students questions about race.