Active ingredients in implicit racial bias training: Incorporating participant voice to promote engagement

Growing recognition of the serious consequences of racism in the United States encourage organizations and agencies to move toward an anti-racist approach. Implicit racial bias trainings are one piece of the approach toward this end. While many such trainings are being conducted nationwide, it remains unclear what practices best encourage participation, engagement, and desired outcomes following implicit racial bias trainings. We collected data from 225 implicit racial bias training participants working in criminal legal, educational, health care, and corporate settings. At the end of the trainings, participants completed brief surveys measuring knowledge about implicit bias, ethnocultural empathy, and acceptability of racial bias. Written responses about what was liked and could be improved in the training were also collected and analyzed using inductive coding to arrive at codes, categories, and themes. Results suggest participant voice is integral in understanding how to engage participants in trainings. Participants described being engaged in the training through a targeted introduction to the topic and through stylistic considerations by the facilitator including modeling vulnerability and self-examination. Findings emphasize that what participants perceive to be best practices in such trainings integrate strategies through which we can educate adult learners, engage participants, and address a sensitive topic head-on.