Multicultural Competence of Helping Profession Students: Cross-cultural Comparison between Europe and Africa

Abstract

The research study is focused on the multicultural competence of helping profession students. We were interested in a cross-cultural comparison between Czech (European) and Gambian (African) students. The main purpose was to discover the level of multicultural competence of Czech and Gambian helping profession students; to discover potential differences in multicultural components between these two groups; to discover if there is an interactive effect of the variable state and university on multicultural competence. The sample consisted of 516 helping profession students from Czech and Gambian universities. The research tool was the Multicultural Competence Scale of Helping Profession Students (MCSHPS). MCSHPS is a 20 item questionnaire containing five factors: multicultural knowledge, multicultural activity, multicultural awareness, understanding of terms and multicultural communication skills. MCSHPS shows the general level and the level of the five factors of multicultural competence. There are differences in the general level of multicultural competence between the Czech and the Gambian students. Czech students have a higher value of multicultural competence than Gambian students. The analysis of the multicultural competence components shows that we can find more important differences among universities rather than between states. The two-way ANOVA shows a significant interactive effect of the state and university on multicultural competence. Although we found significant differences in the general level of multicultural competence between Czech and Gambian students, we consider the differences among universities as more important. The university factor (R squared = 10%) proved more important than the state factor (R squared = 1%). The effect of the university (e.g. teaching methods, motivation, teacher's character etc.) is stronger than cultural determination.