Skin Tone and Institutional Belonging in U.S. Higher Education: Qualitative Narratives

Anonymized qualitative materials from an exploratory study on skin tone, colorism, and institutional belonging in U.S. higher education. The dataset includes open-ended survey narratives and a follow-up interview, analyzed through Critical Race Theory and Webb's IRIS framework. It was authored by Valerie Ray and last updated on June 3, 2026.

Use Cases

• Thematic analysis of student narratives based on concepts of institutional belonging and emotional safety.
• Interpretive coding of qualitative data based on the IRIS framework's individual, relational, institutional, and systemic dimensions.
• Critical discourse analysis of campus climate interpretations based on participant accounts of colorism and representation.

Strengths

• Dataset is grounded in established theoretical frameworks: Critical Race Theory and Webb's IRIS framework.
• Includes multiple qualitative data types: anonymized narrative excerpts, interpretive coding structures, and thematic analytic annotations.

Limitations

• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The study employs a small-N interpretive qualitative design, limiting statistical generalizability.

Provenance

Source

Harvard Dataverse

Collection Method

Collected via anonymized open-ended Google Forms surveys and a semi-structured follow-up interview.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-03 10:41:29; freshness should be verified.

Geography

U.S. Higher Education