The Relationship Between Racial Identity Development and Multicultural Counseling Competency: A Second Look (original) (raw)

2003, Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development

The relationship between racial identity development and multicultural counseling competency across a 2-year period of time was examined in this study. Significant increases were found in multicultural counseling competency but not in their levels of racial identity development across time. Possible explanations for and limitations of this research are discussed. La relacion entre el desarrollo de la identidad racial y la competencia para consejeria multicultural a traves de un periodo de dos atios se examina en esta investigacion. Se encuentran aumentos significantes en la competencia para consejeria multicultural, per0 no en el nivel de desarrollo de identidad racial a traves del tiempo. Se examinan las posibles explicaciones y las limitaciones de esta investigacion tambien. acial identity development, or "one's sense of belonging to an ethnic group and the part of one's thinking, perceptions, feelings, and behav-R ior that is due to an ethnic group membership" (Phinney & Tarver, 1989, p. 266), and multicultural counseling competency, or "counseling that takes place between or among individuals from different cultural backgrounds" (Jackson, 1995, p. 3), have long been thought to be related logically. One would assume that ability to counsel those who are different from oneself is increased with greater awareness and understanding of one's own culture. Some researchers have even included racial identity development as a "significant underlying construct" of multicultural counseling competence (Sodowsky, Taffe, & Gutkin, 1991). Recent research has documented a positive relationship between multicultural counseling competency and racial identity development (Neville et al., 1996; Ottavi, Pope-Davis, & Dings, 1994; Vinson & Neimeyer, 2000). More advanced levels of racial identity development have generally been linked to higher levels of multicultural counseling competency. Although these findings suggested the potential value associated with the examination of one's