The data from this mixed-methods examination of the racial identification patterns of multiracial college students was drawn from a national, longitudinal sample of 1,101 mixed-race college students as well as ten UCLA undergraduates who self-identified as having a mixed-race background. The purpose of this research was to discover whether and how students' racial designation preferences differed over time or across various written and verbal contexts in order to discover the personal and institutional characteristics and experiences associated with those differences. The results reveal the power behind taking a longitudinal approach to student characteristics that are typically treated as static, such as race. This research has implications for the ways in which race and ethnicity are conceptualized, quantified, and represented within the context of higher education .
The results provide a detailed representation of multiracial college students, in terms of the specific racial composition of their backgrounds, other personal characteristics, college experiences, and an analysis of how their designation choices change over the span of college. Through logistic regression analyses, the college-level factors associated with changes in students' identification preferences centered around experiences and environments that exposed students to diverse racial and ethnic individuals and viewpoints. The qualitative data revealed the