The relationship between personal characteristics, multicultural attitudes, and self-reported multicultural competence of graduate students.

Abstract

This study examined some of the underlying attitudes and psychological factors that may affect the self-reported multicultural competence of counseling professionals. Two subscales of the Personality Research Form, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, two subscales of the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF), the Quick Discrimination Index subscales, and the Multicultural Counseling Knowledge and Awareness Scale were administered to 129 graduate students in counseling. Results of regression analyses indicate that there is a positive and significant relationship between Cognitive Racial Attitudes as measured by the Quick Discrimination Index and self-reported multicultural competence. Though a more limited relationship between personality variables and multicultural awareness and knowledge emerged, these variables did not contribute to the prediction equations. Implications for research and training are explored.

Multicultural Personality and Multicultural Counseling Competency in Counselor Trainees

“…The current study replicated and expanded upon the Reynolds and Rivera () study. Our hypotheses were partially supported: Similar to the Reynolds and Rivera () study, we found that cognitive racial attitudes significantly predicted MCC awareness and that neither openness nor race/ethnicity predicted awareness or knowledge. However, in contrast to our hypotheses and the findings from Reynolds and Rivera (), we found that cognitive racial attitudes did not predict MCC knowledge.…”

“…Although we did not find a predictive relationship between multicultural training and MCC knowledge, we did find that multicultural training predicted MCC awareness. Given the demographic similarity between studies, the different results likely stemmed from Reynolds and Rivera () using a different measure of MCC—the Multicultural Counseling Knowledge and Awareness Scale (MCKAS; Ponterotto, Gretchen, Utsey, Rieger, & Austin, ). The MCKAS has items that assess more specific MCC knowledge (e.g., “I am aware some research indicates that minority clients are more likely to be diagnosed with mental illness than are majority clients”) than CBMCS items (e.g., “I have an excellent ability to critique multicultural research”), and this specificity is potentially more activating for individuals with lower cognitive racial attitudes (i.e., more biased toward racial and ethnic minorities).…”

“…We constructed four hierarchical multiple regression models that replicated and expanded upon the models of Reynolds and Rivera (). Each model included a total of 14 independent variables divided among four steps, with the first three steps replicating the significant parts of the Reynolds and Rivera () study. Step 1 included demographic (i.e., race/ethnicity, gender) and multicultural training variables; we did not include age or religion because they did not correlate with any of the MCCs.…”

“…They did not find openness to be a significant predictor, perhaps because they used different measures of openness and MCC than Weatherford and Spokane (). Reynolds and Rivera () called for an extension of their work using more narrow personality factors.…”

“…We sought to replicate and expand upon the Reynolds and Rivera () study using a sample of graduate students in counseling. We replicated the Reynolds and Rivera model by including the control variables of race and multicultural training, the broad personality trait of openness, and the narrow personality trait of cognitive racial attitudes.…”