When writing a research paper, there is usually a section of the conversation that is found where more information is needed to fully understand that portion of paper. This gap where there is a hole in the information can spread throughout your paper and leave the audience wondering why it isn’t touched upon.
Source: GIFSOUP
In relation to diversity on college campuses, my gap is the lack of student opinion I could find to add some more depth to my paper.
I think it is very important to know the student opinion of diversity on campuses when examining this topic as a whole. This is because the students are the ones that are “on the ground” and experiencing the vibe of the campus in real time. Their opinions don’t take statistics into account, but rather a general feeling which I think is a very integral part of understanding diversity.
While I did get some student opinions expressed via my student survey that I did for SCU, I could not get a wide range of opinions from other schools simply because they were not available online and I didn’t have the time or resources to survey other schools from across the country on diversity their campuses. At Santa Clara however, I found it interesting how most of the students thought the population was not diverse at all, while in reality the campus is very diverse. I thought that this sort of notion would be similar at schools like SCU across the country so I based some of my views in my paper off of that data.