Development of the Multicultural Competency Inventory-Client Version

Family therapists face a dramatic increase in the cultural diversity of their clients. Multicultural competence will help family therapists meet the needs of their increasingly diverse clientele (Kocarek, Talbot, Batka, & Anderson, 2001). The measurement of multicultural competence is necessary in order to evaluate the outcomes of multicultural competence programs and the services that minority persons receive. This study reports the development of an instrument to assess clients' perceptions of their therapists' multicultural competence that can be used in individual and family therapy. This instrument was developed through three phases: item generation and theme development, client feedback and evaluation of interrater reliability, and pilot and validity testing. Winsteps (Linacre, 2001) software was used to scale the measurement data to the Rasch Rating Scale Model, and evaluate the dimensionality, rating scale use, item fit, person fit, reliability and precision, as well as to create norms for interpreting the measures. Preliminary support for the MTCI-CV suggests a fairly reliable and valid measure at this stage. Additionally, logistic ordinal regressions were conducted to determine whether MTCI-CV measures are associated with client satisfaction level and goal attainment level. We found that positive client perceptions of therapist cultural competence (on the MTCI-CV) significantly contribute to the probability of clients expressing satisfaction and goal attainment in therapy.