Counselor's multicultural competencies: from gender and ethnicity perspectives

Abstract

Multicultural counseling competencies are stressed so as to maximize counseling efficacy. Previous research discovered how social desirability tends to confound counselors' self-perceived multicultural competence, which multicultural training helped to enhance. Still, counselors' perception of their own gender roles, ethnic backgrounds, and racial attitudes were absent in the training conducted at present. This dissertation examines how respondents' social desirability, race, gender, multicultural training, ethnic identity awareness, and color blind racial attitudes, influence counselors' self-perceived multicultural counseling competencies. The present dissertation collected with web-survey respondents of 338 counselors and counselor trainees, aged between 20 and 68. They are made of 279 females and 59 males. Analyzed with hierarchical multiple regression, the results obtained were as follows. Social desirability influenced respondents' reported multicultural competence, as measured by the Multicultural Counseling Inventory. The respondents' multicultural training, gender role perception, ethnic identity, and color blind racial attitudes did significantly contribute to their self-perceived multicultural counseling competence. These results indicated the critical importance of multicultural training that might do well to focus on enhancing counselors' awareness of their ethnic identities, flexible perceptions of gender roles, and reducing color-blind racial attitudes.