Multicultural Assessment

Psychologists throughout the world are being asked to assess an increasingly diverse clientele: immigrants, refugees, second and third generations still influenced by different cultures and languages, and indigenous peoples now moving towards the mainstream. Most are ill-equipped by training and experience to understand, assess, and subsequently treat such clients competently and ethically. Virtually all agree on the need for culture-sensitive assessment, but it has proven difficult to provide adequate services, despite good intentions and funding. Too often, clients who may have different worldview and health-illness beliefs are marginalized. For many reasons, standard assessment instruments designed, researched, and normed on a few groups in the United States--the MMPI-2, the Rorschach, and the TAT--are used as though they were universally applicable. Most busy practitioners have little time to investigate alternatives developed for use with one new group or another, focused on one issue or another, generally in a research context. In this book, Richard Dana proposes a new model of multicultural assessment practice and points directions for future training and research. He presents general, culture-specific, and step-by-step instrument-specific guidelines for the use of the standard armamentarium with different groups. Throughout, he highlights exciting new interpretive possibilities the traditional tests offer that should be regularly exploited, but emphasizes the importance of recognizing psychometric limits. Four extended examples of the use of one or several instruments with a specific group offer concrete illustrations of the model in action. Multicultural Assessment: Principles, Applications, and Examples constitutes an invaluable new resource for psychologists and for their students and trainees.

Throughout the world as in the United States, psychologists are increasingly being called upon to evaluate clients whose backgrounds differ from their own. It has long been recognized that standard personality and psychopathology assessment instruments carry cultural biases, and in recent years, efforts to correct these biases have accelerated. The Handbook of Cross-Cultural and Multicultural Personality Assessment brings together researchers and practitioners from 12 countries with diverse ethnic and racial identities and training to present state-of-the-art knowledge about how best to minimize cultural biases in the assessment of personality and psychopathology. They consider research methodology, the design and construction of standard objective and projective tests, the use of measures of acculturation, racial identity, and culture-specific tests, the social etiquette of service delivery, and the interpretation of test data for clinical diagnosis. Ranging widely through all the relevant issues, they share a common collective vision of how culturally competent services should be delivered to clients. The Handbook offers the first comprehensive view of a consistent approach to cultural competence in assessment--a necessary precursor of effective intervention. It will become an indispensable reference for all those whose practice or research involves individuals with different ethnic and racial identities.

In this volume, leading researchers and trainers in multicultural counselling and psychology address the issues of what makes a counsellor multiculturally competent and how to create more culturally competent counsellors. The contributors consider ways to evaluate counsellors for their awareness, knowledge and skills in working with a broad spectrum of populations. Chapters also examine in detail the pedagogical implications of establishing competencies, including training philosophies and models as well as course and curriculum development.

Throughout the world as in the United States, psychologists are increasingly being called upon to evaluate clients whose backgrounds differ from their own. It has long been recognized that standard personality and psychopathology assessment instruments carry cultural biases, and in recent years, efforts to correct these biases have accelerated. The Handbook of Cross-Cultural and Multicultural Personality Assessment brings together researchers and practitioners from 12 countries with diverse ethnic and racial identities and training to present state-of-the-art knowledge about how best to minimize cultural biases in the assessment of personality and psychopathology. They consider research methodology, the design and construction of standard objective and projective tests, the use of measures of acculturation, racial identity, and culture-specific tests, the social etiquette of service delivery, and the interpretation of test data for clinical diagnosis. Ranging widely through all the relevant issues, they share a common collective vision of how culturally competent services should be delivered to clients. The Handbook offers the first comprehensive view of a consistent approach to cultural competence in assessment--a necessary precursor of effective intervention. It will become an indispensable reference for all those whose practice or research involves individuals with different ethnic and racial identities.

This thorough analysis of multicultural assessment covers significant issues, including the major instruments and procedures, cognitive and educational assessment, and cross-cultural sensitivity and ethics. Offering the most current empirical research, theory, and specific recommendations, the volume includes case studies that illustrate culturally sensitive procedures and tables that highlight comparisons between particular measures, competencies, and assessment practices. Including updated articles from the original contributors as well as entirely new contributions, the revised version offers compelling ideas for conducting assessments with minority populations.

In this volume, a noted art therapist describes the Magazine Photo Collage MPC projective test and demonstrates its value for therapists working with adults and children of all ages. A highly effective assessment and treatment technique, the MPC is simple to administer and easy for patients to produce, even if they are uncomfortable creating images through drawing, painting, or sculpture. Moreover, unlike most projective tests, the MPC is not culture-bound: by matching the photos provided with the patient's ethnicity, the therapist can enable the patient to reveal conflicts more easily.; The book includes 26 case studies of patients from various ethnic and age groups and 96 full-page examples of MPC, reproduced and analyzed. The cases cover obsessive-compulsive disorder, anorexia and bulimia nervosa, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal ideation, acting-out behaviour, attention deficit disorder, drug abuse, schizophrenia, sexual problems, and other difficulties.

Readings in Multicultural Practice features a wellspring of seminal research studies critical to understanding the complex issues surrounding mental health care and diversity. Providing a wealth of in-depth research into delivering culturally competent care, this rich anthology examines general issues in multicultural counseling competence training; ethnic minority intervention and treatment research; and sociocultural diversities.

Cultural Diversity in Neuropsychological Assessment provides a platform for clinical neuropsychologists, psychologists, and trainees to bridge cultures and speak to each other about the ethnically diverse communities they serve throughout the world. It allows readers to peek into their clinical filing cabinets and examine how they worked with diverse individuals from indigenous and migrant communities of Arab, Asian, European, Israeli, Latin American and Caribbean, Persian, Russian, Sub-Saharan African, and North American origin. The book first reviews important foundations for working with diverse communities that include key knowledge, awareness, skills, and action orientation. It then provides a collection of cases for each cultural geographic region. Each section begins with an introductory chapter to provide a bird’s eye view of the historical and current state of clinical and research practice of neuropsychology in that region. Then, each chapter focuses on a specific community by providing surface and deep-level cultural background knowledge from the authors’ unique perspectives. A case study is then covered in depth to practically showcase an evaluation with someone from that community. This is followed by a summary of key strategic points, lessons learned, references, further readings, and a glossary of culture specific terminology used throughout the chapter. In the end, the appendix provides a list of culturally relevant tests and norms for some communities. This ground-breaking peer-reviewed handbook provides an invaluable clinical resource for neuropsychologists, psychologists, and trainees. It increases self-reflection about multicultural awareness and knowledge, highlights practical ways to increase cultural understanding in neuropsychological and psychological assessments, and sparks further discussion for professional and personal growth in this area.