Investigating factors associated with the cultural competence of undergraduate and postgraduate psychology students

ObjectiveThe provision of culturally competent and safe practice is widely regarded as a minimum threshold expectation for psychologists in Australia. To support the growth of a culturally responsive workforce, Higher Education Providers have faced increasing imperatives to embed opportunities for students to cultivate cultural competence from the earliest stages of undergraduate psychology education, through to postgraduate training pathways. However, few studies to date have considered whether factors associated with the development of cultural competence for psychology students differ across the developmental trajectory.MethodsUndergraduate (N = 196; 127 women; Mage = 19.9) and postgraduate (N = 30; 26 women; Mage = 27.9) psychology students completed an online questionnaire examining whether a series of individual and trainable cultural factors were differentially associated with cultural competence.ResultsAmong undergraduate psychology students, ethnicity, ethnic belonging, ethnocultural empathy and multicultural self-efficacy were positively associated with cultural competence. Interactions between ethnicity and both ethnic belonging and multicultural self-efficacy were also identified. Multicultural self-efficacy was a stand-alone predictor of cultural competence for postgraduate psychology students.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that in striving to cultivate a culturally responsive psychology workforce, professional psychology educators would benefit from focusing on ways to enhance multicultural self-efficacy among future psychologists.