Nida Denson
Biographic Data
| ID | 376349 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nida Denson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nida |
| FAMILY NAME | Denson |
| SIGNATURE | DENSON N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Western Sydney University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5543-0487 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 164 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
An exploration of the cultural and structural influences on Year Coordinators’ vulnerability to compassion fatigue
Young people in Australia are experiencing concerning levels of mental ill-health, with more than one in five reporting high psychological distress. As educators responsible for supporting students’ social and emotional wellbeing, Year Coordinators face frequent exposure to student distress alongside heavy teaching demands, placing them at heightened risk of compassion fatigue. Yet rather than acknowledging the structural forces that intensify th…
Evidence of a negative bias toward people who are childfree by choice
For many people, the decision to have children or not is one of life’s most personal decisions. The number of people without children is growing in many Western countries. Some of these people consciously choose not to have children. In three studies (Study 1 N = 475; Study 2 N = 450; Study 3 N = 293), we provide evidence of a negative bias toward people who choose to be childfree. We compared the childfree to several other social categories as w…
Are Parents Happier, Healthier, and More Engaged With Society than Non-parents
We analyzed data from over 26,000 parents and non-parents from 24 European countries. We tested for differences between parents and non-parents on several indicators of happiness, health, and civic and community engagement. Results showed that there were no differences in global evaluations of happiness, life satisfaction, or subjective health. Non-parents reported being more depressed. Parents were more likely than non-parents to engage in socia…
Complex Religion, Conspiracy Theories, Misinformation, and Covid-19 in NSW, Australia
This article explores contemporary empirical evidence of the extent of the uptake of misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 with regards to religion in the New South Wales population in Australia. The data were collected through an online survey conducted in 2022 (N=5,276). Religious respondents tend to follow conspiracy theories, distrusting the recommendations of scientists and for some, resourcing information from religious lead…
Caring for the carers
Year Coordinators in Australian secondary schools are on the front line of support for students’ wellbeing. Given rising rates of psychological distress amongst high school students and increases in the workload and work complexity of teachers, Year Coordinators may be at particular risk of secondary traumatic stress and burnout—the two components of compassion fatigue. This study examines the prevalence of compassion fatigue and its correlates a…
Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories During the Covid-19 Pandemic in NSW, Australia and the Risks for Social Cohesion
Conspiracy theories are by no means new. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the risks and dangers associated with beliefs in conspiracy theories and misinformation intensified. Furthermore, while conspiracy theories are often attributed to marginal or fringe populations, the pandemic context saw the spread of such ideas more widely and with greater impacts. The latter includes fuelling major public disorders, political violence and/or widespr…
Racism Data in Australia
There are growing public discussions about racism in Australia with renewed government commitment to addressing it. Robust evidence and high-quality data are important for informing anti-racism. However, current data have serious limitations that impact our knowledge about the nature, prevalence and impact of racism in Australia. To examine the state and limitations of data on racism in Australia, we conducted a stocktake review of quantitative r…
Asian Australian's Experiences and Reporting of Racism During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Asian Australian’s Experiences and Reporting of Racism During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Understanding Trust in Contemporary Australia Using Latent Class Analysis
In 2019, an online survey of 2,015 Australian residents examined the extent of trust of various groups and institutions. A Latent Class Analysis (LCA) of the results generated a typology of trust in Australia. The LCA uncovered four classes based on levels of trust as well as associated demographic profiles and attitudes. The four groups were: those that are very distrusting (15%); those that are largely unsure about how much they can trust vario…
Faculty perceptions of work-life balance
A latent class analysis of students’ openness to learning from diverse others
Negotiating co-existing subjectivities
The challenge of mothering while pursuing an academic career is the most significant obstacle to women’s success. However, there is a lack of research examining how being a woman who intensively mothers co-exist with her autonomous subjectivity as an academic. In this qualitative study, academic mothers adhere both to an intensive mothering ideology and the ideal worker construct reified in neo-liberalised academic culture. We argue that these wo…
Asian Australians' Experiences of Online Racism during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Between 13 November 2020 and 11 February 2021, an online national survey of 2003 Asian Australians was conducted to measure the type and frequency of self-identified Asian Australians' experiences of racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey also aimed to gauge the relationships between racist experiences and targets' mental health, wellbeing and sense of belonging. In this paper, we report findings on the type and frequency of online racis…
Institutional Racial Representation and Equity Gaps in College Graduation
College graduation rates for racially minoritized students are adversely affected by structural barriers and hostile campus racial climates, which lead to notable equity gaps within and across institutions. Theory and prior literature suggest that the representation of racially minoritized students and instructors may play a role in shaping these disparities, but the evidence to date is limited and has yielded divergent findings. Therefore, the p…
Do diversity courses improve college student outcomes? A meta-analysis
Comparing STEM Majors by Examining the Relationship Between Student Perceptions of Campus Climate and Classroom Engagement
This study built upon research examining the effects of diversity in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields and higher education by investigating the relationship between student perceptions of campus diversity and classroom engagement for first- and second-year Latinx and White students at two structurally diverse institutions. Findings suggested that perceptions of campus climate have a positive and significant relation…
Race and Class beyond Enrollment
Colleges increasingly emphasize the importance of socioeconomic diversity, but little work examines the link between such diversity and outcomes important to the campus climate. Using a national dataset, we test the link between two measures of socioeconomic diversity and cross-racial interaction, an outcome paramount to triggering the benefits of diversity. Findings indicate that there was no direct effect associated with this form of socioecono…
Not My Family
A substantial amount of national and international research addresses the topic of racism but there remains a limited literature base as to how it may be experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This chapter uses LSIC data which explore parental perceptions of racism. Specific variables include the data captured by LSIC questions on parents’ interpersonal experiences of racism, their experiences of racism experienced within th…
The development and validation of intercultural understanding (ICU) instruments for teachers and students in primary and secondary schools
Intercultural understanding (ICU) is becoming an essential part of living and contributing effectively in our increasingly diverse society. In fact, ICU is a key capability in the Australian schooling curriculum, alongside other general capabilities such as numeracy and literacy. While there are current instruments assessing ICU, there is little evidence-based research surrounding their use in primary and secondary school settings. In the context…
Racial/Cultural Awareness Workshops and Post-College Civic Engagement
Racial/cultural awareness workshops constitute a salient form of co-curricular diversity engagement in higher education. Although these workshops are generally quite short in duration (often no more than two hours), previous research suggests that workshop participation is associated with undergraduate civic growth. The current study uses multilevel propensity score matching analyses to explore whether racial/cultural awareness workshops during c…
Racism as a Determinant of Health
Keep on Truckin’ or Stay the Course? Exploring Grit Dimensions as Differential Predictors of Educational Achievement, Satisfaction, and Intentions
In an ongoing effort to identify predictors of educational success and achievement, grit has emerged as a seemingly useful disposition. Grit is conceived as the combination of perseverance of effort and consistency of interest over time, but the predictive utility of these two dimensions has rarely been explored separately, and the limited research available has considered a small number of outcomes. This article draws upon three samples at two u…
The development and validation of an instrument assessing student-institution fit
While past research has focused on how student background characteristics and university experiences predict student retention and achievement, very few studies have examined the role that student-institution ‘fit’ might play in this process. In this study, we developed and validated a student-institution fit instrument that assesses the correspondence between student and institutional characteristics. We then examined the extent to which student…
Dynamic Relationships
This study examined factors that can moderate the relationship between cross-racial interaction and undergraduate students' development. While previous studies have shown that students benefit from interacting across racial differences, they have not examined whether those educational benefits are moderated by other factors. The moderators examined in this study included measures of the quality of cross-racial interactions, students' support of r…
Does Socioeconomic Diversity Make a Difference? Examining the Effects of Racial and Socioeconomic Diversity on the Campus Climate for Diversity
This article considers whether the socioeconomic diversity of the undergraduate student body and experiences with cross-class interaction (CCI) are significantly related to cross-racial interaction (CRI) and engagement with curricular/co-curricular diversity (CCD) activities. Individual students who reported higher levels of CCI had significantly higher levels of CRI and CCD. While the socioeconomic diversity of the student body had no direct eff…
Racial Diversity Matters
This study addressed two questions: (a) Do different forms of campus racial diversity contribute uniquely to students’ learning and educational experiences when they are simultaneously tested utilizing multilevel modeling? (b) Does a campus where students take greater advantage of those diversity opportunities have independent positive effects on students’ learning? Consideration of racial diversity extended beyond student composition and include…
The Educational Benefits of Sustaining Cross-Racial Interaction among Undergraduates
This study examined whether or not students who either had higher levels of cross-racial interaction during college or had same-institution peers with higher average levels of this type of interaction tend to report significantly larger developmental gains than their counterparts. Unlike previous quantitative studies that tested cross-racial interaction using single-level linear models, this study more accurately models the structure of multileve…
Asian Australians' Experiences of Online Racism during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Between 13 November 2020 and 11 February 2021, an online national survey of 2003 Asian Australians was conducted to measure the type and frequency of self-identified Asian Australians' experiences of racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey also aimed to gauge the relationships between racist experiences and targets' mental health, wellbeing and sense of belonging. In this paper, we report findings on the type and frequency of online racis…
The impact of student experiences with diversity on developing graduate attributes
While the emerging body of international research suggests that students' experiences with diversity impact positively on student learning and their preparation for entering a diverse workforce and society, no similar research is available in relation to students in Australian universities. Many of these outcomes, such as problem‐solving, ability to work with others, and appreciation of and respect for diversity, are attributes that most – if not…
Attitudes and Advocacy
Does Socioeconomic Diversity Make a Difference? Examining the Effects of Racial and Socioeconomic Diversity on the Campus Climate for Diversity
This article considers whether the socioeconomic diversity of the undergraduate student body and experiences with cross-class interaction (CCI) are significantly related to cross-racial interaction (CRI) and engagement with curricular/co-curricular diversity (CCD) activities. Individual students who reported higher levels of CCI had significantly higher levels of CRI and CCD. While the socioeconomic diversity of the student body had no direct eff…
University diversity and preparation for a global society
Although there is growing research showing that students' views, attitudes, and university diversity experiences promote preparation for a global society, little research is available outside of American contexts. This study utilised data collected at one Australian university to examine whether students' views and attitudes towards diversity, and their university diversity experiences, stimulate the development of key attributes needed to functi…
Teacher Racism, Academic Self‐Concept, and Multiculturation
The issue of patterns of educational disengagement for Indigenous Australian students has long been of considerable concern within Indigenous education research. Utilising a sample of 1,376 (305 Indigenous; 1,071 non‐Indigenous) students from five New South Wales high schools in Australia, this study sought to examine the influence of academic self‐concept and two culturally sensitive constructs—specifically, perceived multiculturation (perceived…
The integral role of emotion in interracial interactions and college student outcomes
Validating racism and cultural respect
Within the field of quantitative research, the diverse and negative effects of racial discrimination have become increasingly documented across a number of outcome variables (including physical, mental, and social wellbeing); however, research on the direct effects of racism is less evident within educational settings. The present investigation explored the negative impact of perceived racial discrimination, in addition to perceptions of cultural…
Do diversity courses improve college student outcomes? A meta-analysis
Race and Class beyond Enrollment
Colleges increasingly emphasize the importance of socioeconomic diversity, but little work examines the link between such diversity and outcomes important to the campus climate. Using a national dataset, we test the link between two measures of socioeconomic diversity and cross-racial interaction, an outcome paramount to triggering the benefits of diversity. Findings indicate that there was no direct effect associated with this form of socioecono…
Asian Australian's Experiences and Reporting of Racism During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Asian Australian’s Experiences and Reporting of Racism During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Dynamic Relationships
This study examined factors that can moderate the relationship between cross-racial interaction and undergraduate students' development. While previous studies have shown that students benefit from interacting across racial differences, they have not examined whether those educational benefits are moderated by other factors. The moderators examined in this study included measures of the quality of cross-racial interactions, students' support of r…
The development and validation of intercultural understanding (ICU) instruments for teachers and students in primary and secondary schools
Intercultural understanding (ICU) is becoming an essential part of living and contributing effectively in our increasingly diverse society. In fact, ICU is a key capability in the Australian schooling curriculum, alongside other general capabilities such as numeracy and literacy. While there are current instruments assessing ICU, there is little evidence-based research surrounding their use in primary and secondary school settings. In the context…
Racial/Cultural Awareness Workshops and Post-College Civic Engagement
Racial/cultural awareness workshops constitute a salient form of co-curricular diversity engagement in higher education. Although these workshops are generally quite short in duration (often no more than two hours), previous research suggests that workshop participation is associated with undergraduate civic growth. The current study uses multilevel propensity score matching analyses to explore whether racial/cultural awareness workshops during c…
Negotiating co-existing subjectivities
The challenge of mothering while pursuing an academic career is the most significant obstacle to women’s success. However, there is a lack of research examining how being a woman who intensively mothers co-exist with her autonomous subjectivity as an academic. In this qualitative study, academic mothers adhere both to an intensive mothering ideology and the ideal worker construct reified in neo-liberalised academic culture. We argue that these wo…
Institutional Racial Representation and Equity Gaps in College Graduation
College graduation rates for racially minoritized students are adversely affected by structural barriers and hostile campus racial climates, which lead to notable equity gaps within and across institutions. Theory and prior literature suggest that the representation of racially minoritized students and instructors may play a role in shaping these disparities, but the evidence to date is limited and has yielded divergent findings. Therefore, the p…
The Educational Benefits of Sustaining Cross-Racial Interaction among Undergraduates
This study examined whether or not students who either had higher levels of cross-racial interaction during college or had same-institution peers with higher average levels of this type of interaction tend to report significantly larger developmental gains than their counterparts. Unlike previous quantitative studies that tested cross-racial interaction using single-level linear models, this study more accurately models the structure of multileve…
Attitudes and Advocacy
Racial Diversity Matters
This study addressed two questions: (a) Do different forms of campus racial diversity contribute uniquely to students’ learning and educational experiences when they are simultaneously tested utilizing multilevel modeling? (b) Does a campus where students take greater advantage of those diversity opportunities have independent positive effects on students’ learning? Consideration of racial diversity extended beyond student composition and include…
Validating racism and cultural respect
Within the field of quantitative research, the diverse and negative effects of racial discrimination have become increasingly documented across a number of outcome variables (including physical, mental, and social wellbeing); however, research on the direct effects of racism is less evident within educational settings. The present investigation explored the negative impact of perceived racial discrimination, in addition to perceptions of cultural…
The impact of student experiences with diversity on developing graduate attributes
While the emerging body of international research suggests that students' experiences with diversity impact positively on student learning and their preparation for entering a diverse workforce and society, no similar research is available in relation to students in Australian universities. Many of these outcomes, such as problem‐solving, ability to work with others, and appreciation of and respect for diversity, are attributes that most – if not…
The integral role of emotion in interracial interactions and college student outcomes
Teacher Racism, Academic Self‐Concept, and Multiculturation
The issue of patterns of educational disengagement for Indigenous Australian students has long been of considerable concern within Indigenous education research. Utilising a sample of 1,376 (305 Indigenous; 1,071 non‐Indigenous) students from five New South Wales high schools in Australia, this study sought to examine the influence of academic self‐concept and two culturally sensitive constructs—specifically, perceived multiculturation (perceived…
Does Socioeconomic Diversity Make a Difference? Examining the Effects of Racial and Socioeconomic Diversity on the Campus Climate for Diversity
This article considers whether the socioeconomic diversity of the undergraduate student body and experiences with cross-class interaction (CCI) are significantly related to cross-racial interaction (CRI) and engagement with curricular/co-curricular diversity (CCD) activities. Individual students who reported higher levels of CCI had significantly higher levels of CRI and CCD. While the socioeconomic diversity of the student body had no direct eff…
University diversity and preparation for a global society
Although there is growing research showing that students' views, attitudes, and university diversity experiences promote preparation for a global society, little research is available outside of American contexts. This study utilised data collected at one Australian university to examine whether students' views and attitudes towards diversity, and their university diversity experiences, stimulate the development of key attributes needed to functi…
Racism as a Determinant of Health
Keep on Truckin’ or Stay the Course? Exploring Grit Dimensions as Differential Predictors of Educational Achievement, Satisfaction, and Intentions
In an ongoing effort to identify predictors of educational success and achievement, grit has emerged as a seemingly useful disposition. Grit is conceived as the combination of perseverance of effort and consistency of interest over time, but the predictive utility of these two dimensions has rarely been explored separately, and the limited research available has considered a small number of outcomes. This article draws upon three samples at two u…
The development and validation of an instrument assessing student-institution fit
While past research has focused on how student background characteristics and university experiences predict student retention and achievement, very few studies have examined the role that student-institution ‘fit’ might play in this process. In this study, we developed and validated a student-institution fit instrument that assesses the correspondence between student and institutional characteristics. We then examined the extent to which student…
Dynamic Relationships
This study examined factors that can moderate the relationship between cross-racial interaction and undergraduate students' development. While previous studies have shown that students benefit from interacting across racial differences, they have not examined whether those educational benefits are moderated by other factors. The moderators examined in this study included measures of the quality of cross-racial interactions, students' support of r…
Racial/Cultural Awareness Workshops and Post-College Civic Engagement
Racial/cultural awareness workshops constitute a salient form of co-curricular diversity engagement in higher education. Although these workshops are generally quite short in duration (often no more than two hours), previous research suggests that workshop participation is associated with undergraduate civic growth. The current study uses multilevel propensity score matching analyses to explore whether racial/cultural awareness workshops during c…
Not My Family
A substantial amount of national and international research addresses the topic of racism but there remains a limited literature base as to how it may be experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This chapter uses LSIC data which explore parental perceptions of racism. Specific variables include the data captured by LSIC questions on parents’ interpersonal experiences of racism, their experiences of racism experienced within th…
The development and validation of intercultural understanding (ICU) instruments for teachers and students in primary and secondary schools
Intercultural understanding (ICU) is becoming an essential part of living and contributing effectively in our increasingly diverse society. In fact, ICU is a key capability in the Australian schooling curriculum, alongside other general capabilities such as numeracy and literacy. While there are current instruments assessing ICU, there is little evidence-based research surrounding their use in primary and secondary school settings. In the context…
Race and Class beyond Enrollment
Colleges increasingly emphasize the importance of socioeconomic diversity, but little work examines the link between such diversity and outcomes important to the campus climate. Using a national dataset, we test the link between two measures of socioeconomic diversity and cross-racial interaction, an outcome paramount to triggering the benefits of diversity. Findings indicate that there was no direct effect associated with this form of socioecono…
Comparing STEM Majors by Examining the Relationship Between Student Perceptions of Campus Climate and Classroom Engagement
This study built upon research examining the effects of diversity in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields and higher education by investigating the relationship between student perceptions of campus diversity and classroom engagement for first- and second-year Latinx and White students at two structurally diverse institutions. Findings suggested that perceptions of campus climate have a positive and significant relation…
Do diversity courses improve college student outcomes? A meta-analysis
Institutional Racial Representation and Equity Gaps in College Graduation
College graduation rates for racially minoritized students are adversely affected by structural barriers and hostile campus racial climates, which lead to notable equity gaps within and across institutions. Theory and prior literature suggest that the representation of racially minoritized students and instructors may play a role in shaping these disparities, but the evidence to date is limited and has yielded divergent findings. Therefore, the p…
Faculty perceptions of work-life balance
A latent class analysis of students’ openness to learning from diverse others
Negotiating co-existing subjectivities
The challenge of mothering while pursuing an academic career is the most significant obstacle to women’s success. However, there is a lack of research examining how being a woman who intensively mothers co-exist with her autonomous subjectivity as an academic. In this qualitative study, academic mothers adhere both to an intensive mothering ideology and the ideal worker construct reified in neo-liberalised academic culture. We argue that these wo…
Asian Australians' Experiences of Online Racism during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Between 13 November 2020 and 11 February 2021, an online national survey of 2003 Asian Australians was conducted to measure the type and frequency of self-identified Asian Australians' experiences of racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey also aimed to gauge the relationships between racist experiences and targets' mental health, wellbeing and sense of belonging. In this paper, we report findings on the type and frequency of online racis…
Understanding Trust in Contemporary Australia Using Latent Class Analysis
In 2019, an online survey of 2,015 Australian residents examined the extent of trust of various groups and institutions. A Latent Class Analysis (LCA) of the results generated a typology of trust in Australia. The LCA uncovered four classes based on levels of trust as well as associated demographic profiles and attitudes. The four groups were: those that are very distrusting (15%); those that are largely unsure about how much they can trust vario…
Psychology (24 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Political science (17 works) · Higher Education Research Studies (14 works) · Social Psychology (14 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Higher education (10 works) · Racial and Ethnic Identity Research (10 works) · Diversity (politics (9 works)