Psychotherapy Task-Based Assessment of Therapists\u27 Multicultural Orientation: A Measurement Development Study

Multicultural competencies (MCCs) have laid the foundation for therapists and researchers to strongly consider culture as an important factor in psychotherapy. More recently, Owen (2013) developed the multicultural orientation framework (MCO) to better explicate the MCCs for psychotherapy. The purpose of this dissertation was to develop a Multicultural Orientation Performance Task (MCO-PT) and coding system with therapists-in-training. For the MCO performance task, participants responded to eight brief simulated therapy situations that centered on the intersection of various cultural identities. Responses were recorded and coded for multicultural orientation. Prior to administration, vignettes were vetted by experts in the field. Approximately 100 graduate and undergraduate participants participated in this study. The results from participants\u27 coded MCO-PT were used to establish construct and concurrent validity for the measure. Additionally, participants\u27 results from the coded MCO-PT were compared to the following measures: the Color Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS), Dehumanization Scale, Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), and the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR). This study was on one of the first performance multicultural measures for therapists. The data from this study will help inform therapists-in-training of their multicultural orientation and areas for growth before heading into the profession