Study Notes on Implicit Bias and Multicultural Competency Among Counselor Trainees

Guy A. Boysen: Assistant Professor of Psychology at SUNY Fredonia, focuses on the impact of education on implicit and explicit bias and mental illness definitions.
David L. Vogel: Associate Professor at Iowa State University, interested in stereotyping, stigma in counseling, counselor training, and professional help-seeking.

The study investigates attitudes toward diversity among counselor trainees, contrasting self-report measures with implicit assessment methods.
Sample Size: N = 105 counselor trainees assessed regarding implicit bias towards African Americans and sexual minorities (lesbians and gay men).

Implicit Bias Presence: Participants displayed implicit biases towards targeted groups despite high self-reported multicultural competency.
Level of Training Influence: Self-reported multicultural competency varied by training level, but implicit bias remained constant across levels.
Teaching Implications: Results highlight the need for incorporating implicit bias assessment within multicultural counselor training programs.

Biased attitudes in counseling can adversely affect treatment for diverse clients (American Counseling Association, 2005; American Psychological Association, 2002).
Multicultural training courses have shown effectiveness in enhancing counselor competencies (e.g., Diaz-Lazaro & Cohen, 2001).
Existing research primarily relied on self-report measures, lacking validated discrimination assessments (Kiselica et al., 1999).

Commonly used self-report measures include:
- Multicultural Counseling Awareness Scale (MCAS) (Ponterotto et al., 1996)
- Multicultural Awareness/Knowledge/Skills Survey (MAKSS) (D’Andrea et al., 1991)
- Cross Cultural Counseling Inventory-Revised (CCCI-R) (LaFromboise et al., 1991)
- Multicultural Counseling Inventory (MCI) (Sodowsky et al., 1994)
- Sexual Orientation Counselor Competency Scale (SOCCS) (Bidell, 2005)
These measures exhibit adequate reliability and validity, but further research is needed to relate them to valid bias measures like the Modern Racism Scale (McConahay et al., 1981).

Self-reports may not correlate with external assessments due to social desirability bias (e.g., Constantine & Ladany, 2000).
Counselor trainees might present themselves more favorably than they truly are (Pope-Davis et al., 2001).

Definition: Implicit measures indirectly estimate attitudes through non-conscious evaluations (Fazio & Olson, 2003).
Implicit Association Test (IAT): Developed by Greenwald et al. (1998) to examine quick associations between various concepts, revealing counterintuitive biases.
- Example: Faster associations with congruent categorizations (European Americans with good; African Americans with bad).
Implicit Bias Effect: Evident when reaction times are faster for congruent categories compared to incongruent ones.
Consistent findings across populations highlight that individuals may harbor implicit biases that contradict their explicit self-reported attitudes (e.g., Nosek et al., 2002).

Participants included 105 graduate counseling trainees from four Midwest universities:
- 53 in APA-accredited doctoral and master's counseling psychology programs
- 52 in various unaccredited programs (rehabilitation, school, mental health counseling)
Demographics:
- Majority were female (75%) and European American (75%), with a small representation from other races.
- LGBTQ+ representation was low (4% gay, 11% bisexual).

Multicultural Competency:
- Measured via CCCI-R, assessing multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills with 20 items rated on a 6-point scale (1 = strongly disagree to 6 = strongly agree). ( ext{Internal consistency: } ext{.89} ) in this study.
Implicit Bias Assessment:
- Pen-and-paper IAT measuring implicit attitudes toward African Americans and sexual minorities with categorization tasks utilizing words and images (Lowery et al., 2001).
- Reliability averages reported varied between 0.19 to 0.43 for the bias measures used.

Data collection occurred during the last week of the semester, adhering to pre-established protocols. Participants gave informed consent, completed IAT tasks, and demographic surveys.

IAT scoring conducted by subtracting scores of congruent trials from incongruent ones. Participants with higher than 30% errors were excluded from analyses, resulting in reduced sample sizes for IAT analysis.

Mean score of CCCI-R: ( ext{96.73 (SD = 8.44)} ) indicating a positive agreement in competencies.
Statistical Analysis revealed significant results when comparing the high averages to a neutral baseline of 3, supporting high reported competency levels (t(102) = 20.11, p < .001).

IATs revealed significant implicit biases:
- Faster categorization times for congruent items (African American IAT undetermined, LG IAT strongly significant)
- Statistical outcomes were significant (e.g. t(94) = 4.28, p < .001 for African American IAT).

Hypothesis: Implicit bias would remain unchanged despite training level.
Statistical Evaluation indicated no significant differences noted between training groups for both IATs.

A prominent observation of implicit bias in conjunction with self-reported multicultural competency suggests a complex interplay between awareness and subconscious prejudice.
Findings align with previous research highlighting implicit biases in diverse demographics, confirming the need for implementing diverse assessments in counselor training.

Educators should integrate tools like the IAT in curricula, facilitating training focused not only on explicit biases but also on implicit attitudes.
Understanding and addressing the implications of implicit bias is vital for developing effective counseling practices that genuinely embrace diversity.

High exclusion rates due to IAT error, which may affect the validity of generalizations.
Sample diversity limitations due to geographical confines in the Midwest, potential variances in course effectiveness, and cohort effects.

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