Client Perspectives of Multicultural Counseling Competence

Abstract

Multicultural competence is a burgeoning area of research in counseling psychology. However, there has been little focus on understanding multicultural competence from the perspective of clients. This study used qualitative interviews and grounded theory to develop a model of clients’ perspectives of multicultural counseling. The resulting model suggested that clients’ experiences of multicultural counseling were contingent on their self-identified needs and on how well they felt the counselor met these needs. Moreover, clients appeared to actively manage and moderate the extent to which culture was broached in counseling based on a host of conditions including counseling relationship, salience of identity, counselor behavior, and expectations of counseling, to name a few. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.