Multicultural training of clinical and counseling psychology doctoral students: Ideals vs. practice

The American Psychological Association (APA), which is the advocating body for the field of psychology, emphasizes the importance of multicultural competencies for researchers and clinicians (APA, 2003; 2010). Graduate students are the field\u27s future professionals. The multicultural training of doctoral level clinical and counseling psychology graduate students is integral to efforts to improve clinical services and the research that provides the foundation for those services. While the literature addresses issues of multicultural competence and training in a general way, few specifics regarding the methods employed by graduate programs to aid their students in the process of developing those competencies are explored. This study is a survey of doctoral programs. It was hypothesized that many training programs acknowledge the importance of multicultural training but fall far short in their efforts to provide students with sufficient training. Additionally, it was hypothesized that doctoral students who identified their programs as highlighting multicultural competence would have greater multicultural self-efficacy. Graduate students\u27 self-perceived multicultural competence was associated with a number of program training methods. Although analyses yielded clear differences in guidelines and standards adherence between program types, all participating training directors reported that multicultural issues are incorporated into their program training methods. As anticipated, many programs did not directly address multiculturalism and diversity in their training materials. Descriptive information about multicultural training methods, reflection on exemplary training methods, and recommendations for training initiatives are provided