How do multicultural university students define and make sense of intercultural contact?: A qualitative study

In a departure from past intercultural contact research, this study examines how culturally different students define, make sense of, and experience intercultural interaction at a multicultural university in the U.S. By employing a qualitative in-depth interviewing method, the author conducts 80 interviews with students over a 3-year period in which they present their own definitions and accounts of intercultural interaction on campus. She finds that multicultural university students have complex and multilayered interpretations of intercultural interaction that are shaped in part by surrounding ideologies of diversity, specific definitions of culture, and perceptions of the nationality, race, or ethnicity of their interactants.