Cultural Competency Assessment Scale

Cultural Competency Methodological and Data Strategies to Assess the Quality of Services in Mental Health Systems of Care: Cultural Competency Assessment Scale

Principal Investigators: Carole Siegel, Ph.D., Gary Haugland, MA, Ethel Davis Chambers, RN, MS.
Study Team Co-Investigators: Cathy Cave, BS, Lenora Rose-Reid, CCSI, Monroe County

PROJECT GOAL

To develop a Cultural Competency Assessment Scale for service agencies.

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES AND RESULTS

A scale was developed that was derived from the work of the two phase SAMHSA/CMHS funded project conducted in prior years in which performance measures of cultural competency in behavioral healthcare settings were selected and benchmarked. An expert panel of persons from the four major racial/ethnic groups in the US, experts in CC, providers, consumers and planning persons guided the work, in addition to consumer focus group reviews. A small group of these panel members used the measures and their benchmarks to set the criteria to be measured, within 11 areas, and these became the basis of the scale. For each area, an agency’s performance is rated on a five point scale, with four levels of the scale related to a specific performance measure and its benchmark and the first level reserved to indicate no action. The rating of “5” on an item represents the ideal condition that the expert panel felt was attainable.

The 11 areas are:
1. Organization’s commitment to CC
2. Assessment of service needs/identification of threshold-level cultural groups
3. Cultural input into CC
4. Integration of CC in organization
5. CC staff training activities
6. Recruitment, hiring and retention of staff
7. Language capacity/ interpreters
8. Language capacity/ bilingual staff
9. Language capacity/ vital forms
10. Language capacity/ service and educational materials
11. Service Development

An earlier version of the scale was pre-piloted with seven agencies. They commented on the ordering of the items and the clarity of the instructions. The present scale incorporates these changes and is now being pilot tested in 10 agencies of the Cambridge Health Alliance in Mass. with Dr. Margarita Alegria directing the effort.

To request a copy of the Cultural Competency Assessment Scale, contact Gary Haugland by e-mail or phone,
845 398-6580.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Use of the scale is simpler than applying the long list of measures that had been developed. Its use is expected to move and promote organizations and their personnel toward culturally competent behaviors in the delivery of mental health services. The CC Assessment Scale is fully compatible with prior work of other groups and in particular with the CLAS standards.

PLANS

A grant is under development to establish the psychometric properties of the scale. Reliability will be tested in terms of the ability of rater’s to collect accurate data. Validity will be examined in terms of the ability of the scale score to predict disparities. We continue working with Dr. Robert Drake from Dartmouth on the possibility of interfacing these measures with material in the Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) Toolkits to ensure that cultural competency is taken into account when disseminating and adapting EBPs. Several grant submissions to SAMHSA on EBPs have included the use of our scale in their assessment plans.

Related Projects: Multicultural Issues

Entered: 7/3/03