TPC Journal V8, Issue 4- FULL ISSUE

322 The Professional Counselor | Volume 8, Issue 4 after the third session for both clients and counselors. Thus, assessing multicultural competence and the working alliance after the third session may not have been enough time for clients to evaluate their counseling relationship or their CITs’ multicultural competence. For example, Fitzpatrick et al. (2005) explored clients’ perceptions of the working alliance utilizing the WAI-S over three phases of counseling (e.g., early: 2–4 sessions; middle: midpoint; late: fourth, third, or second to last). Fitzpatrick and colleagues (2005) conducted a MANOVA with two within-subject design factors. The two factors were phases of counseling (i.e., early, middle, late) and WAI subscales (i.e., task, bond, goal). Results indicated as a whole, client-rated alliance increased over time. Therefore, results of this analysis may have been different if multicultural competence and the working alliance were measured over time. Linear modeling results indicated significant differences between client and CIT perceptions of the working alliance and counselors’ multicultural competence after controlling for social desirability. In addition, upon inspection of the mean scores between clients and CITs, clients rated their CITs’ multicultural competence and the working alliance higher than CITs rated their multicultural competence and the working alliance. Similar to this investigation, Depue, Lambie, Liu, and Gonzalez (2016) found significant differences on client and CIT ratings of the working alliance, with clients rating the working alliance higher than counselors. Contrastingly, Fuertes and colleagues (2006) found no significant differences between the working alliance for clients or CITs and significant differences between perceptions of counselors’ multicultural competence, with CITs’ ratings being higher than clients, highlighting mixed research findings. A factor that may influence the perceptions of clients and CITs is the way clients and counselors would define counseling terms. First, clients and CITs may differ in their definition of what a quality therapeutic relationship or what a culturally responsive CIT looks like. For example, counselors may view the strength of the therapeutic relationship based on client progress (Bachelor & Horvath, 1999), while clients may view the quality of the relationship based on how much unconditional positive regard they sense from their counselors (Norcross, 2011). Similarly, with multicultural competence, Pope-Davis et al. (2002) suggested that clients may not perceive multicultural competence in the same way as counselors. A common theme found in Pope-Davis et al.’s (2002) qualitative investigation on client perceptions of culturally relevant components in counseling indicated that the need for integration of culture in counseling was only relevant if the client self-identified their culture as a core value in their life. On the other hand, counselors may view their level of multicultural competence based on how much knowledge they have about their clients’ cultures. Second, counselors’ level of experience might influence the way they rate themselves. For example, novice counselors, such as the participants in this investigation, often have anxiety that can negatively influence their beliefs about their counseling performance (Rønnestad & Skovholt, 2003; Stoltenberg & McNeill, 2010). Barden and Greene (2015) explored the relationship between counselor education students’ levels of self-reported multicultural counseling competence and multicultural counseling self- efficacy, with results indicating that students who had been in graduate education longer had higher self- reported multicultural counseling competence and higher levels of multicultural knowledge, highlighting a potential explanation for lower multicultural competence ratings in the current investigation. Implications for Counselors In this investigation, results highlighted that clients and CITs perceive the working alliance and counselors’ multicultural competence differently. Counselors might want to give assessments such