A racial survey by a Saint Louis University faculty member will soon be seen on national television. Dateline NBC contacted Psychology Professor Elaine Jones last semester and asked her to conduct a survey on racial behavior of 3, 6 and 9-year-olds, due to air sometime in March on both Dateline NBC and The Discovery Channel.

Dateline contacted Jones’ mentor from graduate school and asked her if she had anyone who could conduct this survey. Jones was selected and interviews for the survey took place the weekend of Jan. 8.

The study involved Jones and several staff members showing drawings of black and white children to children and evaluating their responses.

The drawings contained children of different ethnic backgrounds showing a variety of behaviors. Some drawings depicted children helping and sharing. Others were of children pushing. There was descriptive sentence at the bottom of each drawing. The children were then asked to show pictures of smiling and frowning faces, depending on how they liked what they saw.

“Children think based on a person’s race,” Jones said. “They don’t have to wait until elementary school to pick that up. When they seem to know about race, it’s a good time to talk about it.”

Jones, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, believes that people need to be more open-minded about racial issues.

“People are uncomfortable with racial issues, and that’s unfortunate,” Jones said. “Working on children’s racial attitudes is important.

“The public doesn’t know a lot (about racial issues). This program would open dialogue about relations of children,” Jones added.”Race is not a comfortable topic. That is unfortunate.”

The children surveyed were recruited from various schools in and around the city, including 12 pre-schools.

“We were hoping to get 60 (students), but we had great results,” Jones said. “We had 40 extra (participants).”

Jones added that the work done on campus with the interviewing and the help with the camera can be credited to Clayton Berry, public relations specialist for the Frost campus.

The staff in the public relations department and the rest of the psychology department were also helpful in conducting the survey.

Jones has been working at SLU since the fall semester of 1995, teaching courses in child psychological development and social and personality development.