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Friday, 3 March 2023

Not slipping up with testing

Collectively, our clients have a wide range of worldviews, experiences, values, and expectations due to their cultural and social context. As practitioners, we must be open to exploring the client's context, not making assumptions about their culture, their identity, and their ethnicity (Arthur & Collins, 2011).

Both ourselves as practitioners, and the assessments we select, can inadvertently be racist and ethnocentric. Our clients deserve to have valid, culturally appropriate career experiences as they understand themselves and are better able to make informed choices (Blustein & Ellis, 2000). Any assumptions we make about a client's cultural influence can be problematic, potentially resulting in stereotypical thinking. This not only contradicts our professional codes of ethics (CDANZ, 2016; Stuart, 2004), but also limits our effectiveness in building the focus of our practice: “a strong therapeutic alliance” (Flores et al., 2003, p. 78).

Our role as practitioners is to reflect on the client's cultural identity, considering whether a particular tool or model may be culturally relevant for them; and whether that will aid their understanding of self in terms of future aspirations (Arthur & Collins, 2011). Coming back to consider our underlying career theories helps us to engage in more rigorous personal analysis with our client. We take the time together what theory should guide our process, and that should lead us to resulting measurement tools which have value and is relevant to the client in front of us (Blustein & Ellis, 2000). Having our client undertake any test without due consideration, planning, and research is unethical (CDANZ, 2016). Further, we must honour Te Tiriti, offering Māori models and processes to aid our client's career pathways (Came et al., 2020).

We need to remind ourselves that data from quantitative assessments are only valid when derived - and normed - from within the person's culture. Thus assessing the appropriateness of a particular test, and information collected, should be a careful and considered process (Stuart, 2004). If not careful, not only may the data collected not be relevant, it may cause confusion (Osborn & Zunker, 2016), or damage the client's self-concept (Arthur & Collins, 2011). During a results debrief, we need to acknowledge - as they were not designed for New Zealand - where cultural biases in the tool may impact the test findings for our client (Arthur & Collins, 2011). Our clients tend to come from multiple cultures here in Aotearoa, and we are a small population: few assessments are normed here. 

So, when we are using a qualitative assessment which has not been normed for our cultural group, it has been suggested that we treat that assessment as if it were qualitative: i.e. that it provides general advice, which should be used with caution (Flores et al., 2003).

Let's be careful out there. We don't want to slip up.


Sam & Fiona

References:

Arthur, N., & Collins, S. (2011). Infusing culture in career counseling. Journal of Employment Counseling, 48(4), 147-149. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1920.2011.tb01098.x

Blustein, D. L., & Ellis, M. V. (2000). The Cultural Context of Career Assessment. Journal of Career Assessment, 8(4), 379–390. https://doi.org/10.1177/10690727000080040

Came, H., Kidd, J., & Goza, T. (2020). A Critical Tiriti Analysis of the New Zealand Cancer Control Strategy. Journal of Cancer Policy, 23, 100-210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcpo.2019.100210

CDANZ (2016). Code of Ethics. The Career Development Association of New Zealand. http://www.cdanz.org.nz/uploads/CDANZ_CoE_Word%20English%20Final.pdf

Flores, L. Y., Spanierman, L. B., & Obasi, E. M. (2003). Ethical and professional issues in career assessment with diverse racial and ethnic groups. Journal of Career Assessment, 11(1), 76-95. https://doi.org/10.1177/106907202237461

Osborn, D. S., & Zunker, V. G. (2016). Using Assessment Results for Career Development (9th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Stuart, B. (2004). Twelve Practical Suggestions for Achieving Multicultural Competence. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice 35(1) 3–9. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.35.1.3

* Fiona Wilson has kindly prepared much of the material used in this post

2 comments :

  1. Things keep changing and that's Ok.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for commenting! Yes, you are right: things keep changing, and will continue that way :-)

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