One Size Does Not Fit All

Abstract

Mallinckrodt et al. developed the measure Everyday Multicultural Competencies and combined its items with those in the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy to form a new scale to assess college multicultural programming. Mallinckrodt, Miles, and Recabarren used this scale as an example to provide recommendations for using focus groups and item response theory (IRT) in instrument development. In this commentary, we focus on two areas of major concerns: (a) paradigmatic and methodological issues pertaining to the use of mixed methods research design, focus groups, and IRT in developing psychological instruments aiming to assess multicultural constructs and (b) the importance of attending to the multidimensionality and context of these constructs. We believe it is important for future researchers to provide a thorough accounting of these paradigmatic and methodological issues in their studies and a clear explication of the target construct in scale development research.