TPC Journal V8, Issue 4- FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 8, Issue 4 315 Studies such as Huppert et al. (2014) highlight the important role that the working alliance has in client outcomes in counseling. However, Drisko (2013) acknowledged that the therapeutic relationship is not the sole predictor of client outcomes and highlighted that additional factors in counseling, combined with a strong therapeutic relationship, can influence outcomes. Other common factors can include client motivation and counselor characteristics such as multicultural competence. Collins and Arthur (2010) described the working alliance as the cornerstone in the counseling process that facilitates a transformative collaborative approach in helping clients explore and understand their cultural self-awareness. Multicultural Competence and Client Outcomes In 1992, Sue, Arredondo, and McDavis developed the Multicultural Counseling Competencies, and in 1996 Arredondo and colleagues presented a paper outlining the Tripartite Model of Multicultural Counseling that categorized multicultural competence into three factors: awareness, knowledge, and skills. More recently, the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development and the American Counseling Association (ACA) have endorsed a set of updated competencies, including a social justice framework entitled the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (MSJCC; Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler, & McCullough, 2015). Research supports positive associations between clients’ perceptions of their counselors’ multicultural competence and (a) client outcomes (Owen, Leach, Wampold, & Rodolfa, 2011); (b) the counseling relationship (Fuertes & Brobst, 2002; Fuertes et al., 2006; Li & Kim, 2004; Pope-Davis et al., 2002); and (c) satisfaction with counseling (Constantine, 2002; Fuertes & Brobst, 2002). These associations show how influential clients’ perceptions of their counselors’ multicultural competence are based on a variety of aspects of the counseling process. However, the majority of studies have focused on exploring counselors’ multicultural competence from only the counselor’s perspective (Worthington, Soth-McNett, & Moreno, 2007). Self-report multicultural measures have been criticized for being prone to participants responding in a socially desirable manner and having a tendency to measure anticipated behaviors of multicultural competence rather than actual behaviors and attitudes of multicultural competence (Constantine & Ladany, 2000; Worthington, Mobley, Franks, & Tan, 2000). In addition, counselors’ ratings of their multicultural competence can differ from ratings from an observer (e.g., supervisor; Worthington et al., 2000) or their client (Smith & Trimble, 2016). Social desirability is a response bias in which research participants attempt to make a good impression when completing research studies by answering in an overly positive manner (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960). One way researchers can minimize the potential threat of social desirability is to input a social desirability scale (Drisko, 2013) and to control for social desirability, which can improve the accuracy of the research design (McKibben & Silvia, 2016). In addition to the majority of studies only looking at counselors’ perspectives, there is a need for further research on how CITs’ multicultural competence associates with client outcomes (D’Andrea & Heckman, 2008). For example, Soto, Smith, Griner, Rodríguez, and Bernal (2018) conducted a meta-analysis looking at how many studies have explored how client outcomes are related to their counselors’ level of multicultural competence. Only 15 studies were found that explored client outcomes and counselors’ multicultural competence. From the 15 studies, 73% appeared since 2010, including several unpublished dissertations (40%). The fact that only 15 studies were identified that met inclusion criteria for this study and were found several decades after the multicultural competencies have emerged suggests the need for further investigation on this topic (Soto et al., 2018). Two specific studies, Owen et al. (2011) and Tao, Owen, Pace, and Imel (2015), explored the relationships between multicultural competence and the counseling process. Owen and colleagues’ findings indicated a