Multicultural counseling competencies: Verbal content, counselor attributions, and social desirability.

Abstract

This study investigated the validity of 2 instruments designed to measure the multicultural counseling competencies (MCC). Fifty-five counselors participated in a counseling simulation involving a videotaped portrayal of a female Mexican American client at a predominantly White university. Counselors made attributions about the causes of the client's problem and completed a self-report MCC scale and a social desirability scale. Independent judges evaluated counselors' verbal responses for multicultural content and observed MCC. Results indicate that (a) there was little relation between self- and other-rated MCC, in which only self-reported MCC knowledge was a predictor of observed MCC; (b) self-reported MCC was positively associated with social desirability; and (c) observed MCC was positively associated with sociocultural etiology attributions, external locus of the cause attributions, and multicultural verbal content.