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

This study investigated the validity of 2 instruments designed to measure t he multicultural counseling competencies (MCC). Fifty-five counselors parti cipated in a counseling simulation involving a videotaped portrayal of a fe male Mexican American client at a predominantly White university. Counselor s 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 obser ved MCC. Results indicate that (a) there was little relation between self- and other-rated MCC, in which only self-reported MCC knowledge was a predic tor of observed MCC; (b) self-reported MCC was positively associated with s ocial desirability; and (c) observed MCC was positively associated with soc iocultural etiology attributions, external locus of the cause attributions and multicultural verbal content.