Cultural sensitivity and cultural competence: toward clarity of definitions in cross-cultural counselling and psychotherapy

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to clarify definitions of cultural sensitivity and cultural competence in the literature on cross-cultural counselling and psychotherapy by examining the semantic relation between the two terms. These terms were included among ten cultural terms subjected to descriptive and multivariate statistical analyses. Descriptive analyses involved frequency count of the number of hits for each term across several search parameters, and of their co-occurrence in the literature. Multivariate analyses were multidimensional scaling supplemented by cluster analysis. Results indicated that the terms cultural sensitivity and cultural competence are salient and semantically associated in the psychological literature. Implications for cross-cultural training are discussed.