Northern Ireland
by [1]
Ed Cairns & Seamus Dunn
A secondary analyses of the NISA data sets for 1989 and 1991 was undertaken testing the hypotheses that: -
There was some support for the first hypothesis indicating that contact may play a very limited but positive role in determining attitudes towards contact (although the direction of causality is based on speculation as it must always be in a study employing a cross-sectional design). There was however no support for the idea that either attitudes towards contact or reported contact itself played a role in determining intergroup attitudes. Overall therefore the results presented confirmed the suggestions made by Gallagher and Dunn (1991) that greater experience of contact results in a more favourable attitude to contact generally. Further it may be important that the present analyses have identified two separate, largely independent, components to contact (with stranger and with relatives) and in turn have indicated that the former of these may be more important. Finally the analyses presented here have gone one step further than Gallagher and Dunn by showing that increased contact does not necessarily lead to improved attitudes towards the outgroup. Research Implications The results noted above have obvious research implications for further Northern Ireland Social Attitudes surveys. In particular, suggestions were made regarding additional questions that could be added to the Northern Irish Social Attitudes questions presently in use which would greatly add to their value. These questions would tap information presently missing from the NISA questionnaire- for example is actual intergroup contact occurring, if so is this contact voluntary and is its outcome perceived as positive or negative. Therefore while the present results could be interpreted as suggesting that contact is playing a role in influencing attitudes towards contact this would need to be confirmed by further research which employed better measures an using a time-series design. Policy Implications: If the results of this study are accepted at face value this means that it is not possible to rely on naturally occurring intergroup contact to foster improved intergroup relations. One corollary of this could be that the contact hypothesis is not working in Northern Ireland or a more likely conclusion could be that it has not been effectively implemented. This is because daily contact is more likely to take place at an interpersonal level rather than at an intergroup level. To overcome this requires involving people in activities where the relevant social identities are salient before and during the process of contact. At its most basic this could mean having groups meet as groups rather than as collections of individuals. Further to be maximally effective this would require that the groups contain members who are prototypical of their community. However given the fact that the results of the present research hinted at a resentment on the part of people to government intervention in this area such an intervention would be best carried out by non-governmental agencies.
Overall the results presented here confirm the suggestions made by Gallagher and Dunn (1991) that greater experience of contact results in a more favourable attitude to contact generally. Further it may be important that the present analyses have identified two separate, largely independent, components to contact (with stranger and with relatives) and in turn have indicated that the former of these may be more important. Finally the analyses presented here have gone one step further than Gallagher and Dunn by showing that increased contact does not necessarily lead to improved attitudes towards the outgroup. In some ways we should perhaps not be surprised given that Rose noted in 1971 (P. 308) that 'the extent to which an individual is segregated among his own kind has little influence on his readiness to support the Constitution'. Presumably the obverse of this was also true and thus the extent to which an individual mixed in 1971 with the other community also had little influence on his/her readiness to support the constitution. If one substitutes for Rose's 'readiness to support the constitution' the term 'attitudes towards the outgroup' - a not unreasonable substitution in Northern Irish terms - then it could be argued that little has changed over the last twenty-five years. Further in other societies such as South Africa and the United States where contact between groups also occurs similar conclusions have been reached. This is that the type of contact that takes place on a daily basis does not influence intergroup attitudes. One explanation for this is that such contact takes place at an interpersonal level and not at an intergroup level. This is exactly what Cairns et al. (1992) in their report to CCRU on intergroup contact in a Northern Irish university setting concluded that...' while mixing does occur for the most part it is probably relatively superficial consisting of casual rather than intimate contact'. The results of the present study suggest that it is likely that this conclusion may also hold for non-university settings in Northern Ireland. Policy Implications: If the results of this study are accepted at face value this means that it is not possible to rely on naturally occurring intergroup contact to foster improved intergroup relations. One corollary of this could be that the contact hypothesis is not working in Northern Ireland or a more likely conclusion could be that it has not been effectively implemented. If the later conclusion is correct this in turn implies some sort of intervention is needed to insure that contact takes place at an intergroup level and not simply at an interpersonal level. This would mean involving people in activities where steps are taken to make the relevant social identities salient before and during the process of contact. At its most basic this could mean having groups meet as groups rather than as collections of individuals. Further to be maximally effective this would require that the groups contain members who are prototypical of their community. However given the possible sensitivities of individuals hinted at in the results above to government intervention in this area this suggests that this is a role best carried out by non-governmental agencies. Research Implications: The results noted above have obvious research implications for further Northern Ireland Social Attitudes surveys. To begin with there is the suggestion of redundancy in the questions. More important there is the implication that in the field of community relations more useful questions could be asked. For the moment the present results could be interpreted as suggesting that what is happening in Northern Irish society is that contact is playing a role in influencing attitudes towards contact but of course it is perfectly possible that it is attitudes that influence contact. To confirm this research would have to be carried out which employed better measures purposely designed to tap these specific areas and which employed a longitudinal (time-series) design.
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