Development And Validation Of A Scale Measuring Psychologists’ Perceived Competency with Clients Experiencing Low Income or Economic Marginalization

Eileen E Joy, Purdue University

Abstract

The representation of economically marginalized rural communities (EMRC) within psychotherapy literature and training is largely absent, despite these communities’ unique experiences with and barriers to mental health care. EMRCs within the United States share specific cultural values and beliefs, including distrust of institutions and outsiders, self-reliance, stoicism, and personal responsibility. This review focuses on these EMRC values to provide context for mental health policies, resources, and therapist multicultural competencies and orientation when working within these communities to ultimately understand the therapy experiences of clients from EMRCs. This review provides recommendations for professional organizations, educators, and practitioners to improve mental health care for clients in EMRCs.The field of psychology is working to rectify decades of silence on issues of economic marginalization in psychotherapy research, practice, and training. Increasing attention to economic marginalization led the APA to publish the first Guidelines for Psychological Practice for People with Low-Income and Economic Marginalization in 2019. The purpose of this paper is to describe the results of two studies that developed and validated the Clinical Practice Competencies for LIEM (CPC-LIEM), a scale based on these guidelines that measures psychologists’ clinical competence working with low-income and economically marginalized communities. In Study 1, I developed the initial scale through expert review and identified the scale factor structure using exploratory factor analysis. In Study 2, I gathered a second sample of psychologists to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis and validate the CPC-LIEM. The CPC-LIEM was associated with general multicultural counseling competence and clinician self-report of therapy processes with clients from low-income economically marginalized backgrounds, but not with class-related attitudes or general multicultural awareness. The final 14-item five-factor CPC-LIEM represents a novel way to measure and increase attention to LIEM-related clinical competencies for clinicians, supervisors, and researchers.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Bartholomew, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Clinical psychology|Health care management|Multicultural Education|Psychology|Therapy

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