Validation of Multicultural Counseling Competency Scale in Thai Context

Abstract

This study aimed to validate psychometric properties of the Multicultural Counseling Competency (MCC) Scale in Thai Context. Participants were 401 professional counselors and graduate students in Counseling Psychology and related field. Instruments were the MCC Scale, the Working Alliance Inventory-Short Form (WAI-S) and the Social Desirability Scale (SDS). the MCC Scale consisted of 47 items and ten components: the awareness of own assumption: belief and attitude the awareness of own assumption: knowledge, the awareness of own assumption: skills the understanding of client’s worldview: belief and attitude, the understanding of client’s worldview: knowledge, the understanding of client’s worldview: skills the developing appropriate interventions: belief and attitude, the developing appropriate interventions: knowledge, the developing appropriate interventions: skills, and the well integration between professional and personal life. Content validity of the Scale was supported by expert panel. The MCC scale was significantly and positively correlated with the WAI-S (r =.48) and did not show significantly correlated with SDS (r =.04). CFA supported construct of the MCC scale (χ2 = 40.58; df = 28; p =.059; CFI = 1.00; GFI =.98; AGFI =.95; SRMR =.03; RMSEA =.04; χ2/df = 1.45). And further examined its validity by using the known-group technique (professional counselors with more than three years of experience and fourth-year students in psychology major). The mean scores of the two groups were significantly different (t = 3.71, p <.01). The internal consistencies of the MCC scale as measured by Cronbach’s alphas were .96.