Warren, M. A., Warren, M. T., & Bordoloi, S. D., Bock, H.* & Smith, B. * (in progress). Anti-Racism Allyship Readiness Questionnaire: Developing a measure of Anti-Racism Allyship Readiness in the workplace.

In corporate America, organizations tend to utilize statements, policies and training as strategies for improving equity and inclusion (Joshi et al., 2015). However, these organizational strategies for addressing anti-racism may be unrealistic, disconnected from employees’ experiences, and resources devoted toward anti-racism may be clumsy and inefficient when organizations are not taking into account employees’ existing allyship competencies. One-size-fits-all anti-racism trainings, policies and statements are often insufficient in motivating productive action at all levels. For example, these “go-to” anti-racism strategies may disenchant employees who view them as punitive (Kalev et al., 2006; Kidder et al., 2004) while also “missing the mark” for many would-be allies and BIPOC employees (Warren & Bordoloi, accepted).

Therefore, a multidimensional measure that identifies employees’ allyship competencies (or lack thereof) could inform more effective ways of supporting allyship growth and result in better outcomes for BIPOC. This 3-study project will develop the Anti-Racism Allyship Readiness Questionnaire (AR-ARQ). Allyship is conceptualized as an individual difference variable that is comprised of three socio-cognitive mechanisms (sensitivity, allyship motivation, and competencies) that captures how individuals effectively process contextual affordances for allyship in the workplace (i.e., problems involving bias and opportunities for allyship growth), and consistently produce allyship-appropriate behaviors across a wide variety of allyship-relevant work situations and over time.

* Haley Bock and Brooklynn Smith are current graduate students in the MS psychology program at Western.