Date of Award:

8-2020

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Psychology

Committee Chair(s)

Melanie M. Domenech Rodríguez

Committee

Melanie M. Domenech Rodríguez

Committee

Melissa A. Tehee

Committee

Michael E. Levin

Abstract

In an increasingly diverse and multicultural society, there is a pressing and practical need for interventions to help professionals improve their cultural competence. Cultural competence trainings that target psychological flexibility in addition to knowledge, awareness, and skills may produce more efficacious results. The current study will examined the utility of targeting psychological flexibility (the ability to maintain contact the present moment and current internal experiences and to choose contextually appropriate, values-consistent behaviors, regardless of what one’s internal experiences are) as a process to enhance the impact of a cultural competence intervention with an Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT)-enhanced cultural competence intervention.

Sixty-nine participants completed four-week online cultural competence trainings. Participants were randomly assigned to complete either a cultural competence as usual training (CCAU) or a cultural competence plus psychological flexibility training (CC+PF). Results from program engagement and program evaluation data suggest that the CC+PF condition was feasible and acceptable. Analysis of data between groups did not show statistically significant shifts in psychological flexibility, which may have been due to low power from a small sample size. Analysis of data did not show statistically different shifts in cultural competence between groups, however, there were significant improvements in cultural competence and ethnocultural empathy when the sample was examined as a whole.

While the results of the present study suggest that adding techniques aimed at increasing psychological flexibility to a cultural competence intervention is feasible and acceptable to participants, future research with a larger dosage and a larger sample size is needed to examine the utility of ACT to enhance outcomes in tripartite cultural competence interventions.

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