Although many attempts have been made to address cultural bias in assessment instruments, such biases still exist .
Unfortunately, although culture speci?c or culturally fair testing procedures are sometimes available, such approaches limit valuable information available to the interviewer. Culture speci?c assessment limits the person’s experience to membership of a particular group, thus missing the uniqueness of the individual; culturally fair assessment instruments tend to wash out the cultural in?uences, thus neglecting the impact culture has on a person’s life . While speci?c information regarding instrumentation is beyond the scope of this article, an interviewer working with a culturally different client should consider the following general questions: Are there other, less culturally bound options to obtain the necessary information? Are there ways to accommodate or ameliorate the cultural differences? Will the use of this assessment procedure help me to understand the individual’s experience as a unique cultural being? Additional guidelines for interviewing culturally different clients are provided in Table 13.1.
Multicultural and Diversity Issues 395396 Interviewing Special Populations Table 13.1. The Dos and Don’ts of Initial Sessions with Multicultural Clients The following are suggestions for interviewers working with clients who come from cultural, racial, ethnic, religious, or life experience backgrounds different from themselves. The applicability and relevance of each suggestion must be evaluated with the particular clinical situation at hand. Our intention is to provide a thought provoking checklist.
Concluding comments should be brief, reassuring, and upbeat. Again expressing your respect for their choice to come in, your appreciation for their work, or noting events upcoming in the week can be good transitional termination talk.
FORMAL COUPLE AND FAMILY ASSESSMENT PROCEDURES Numerous couple and family assessment devices exist. It is beyond the purpose of this article to provide detailed descriptions of these devices. Therefore, instead of providing an exhaustive review of couple and family assessment procedures, we have listed some of the most popular instruments and procedures, along with their original references, in Table 12.1.
Interviewing Couples and Families Table 12.1. Couples and Family Assessment Instruments
Instrument and Citation General Description
Family Environment Scale The assumption underlying this measure is that environments, , Moos and Moos, 1986 such as families, have unique personalities that can be measured in much the same way as individual personality. Thus, the 90 item family environment scale seeks to measure the unique social climate within the family.
The Family Genogram, The family genogram is a procedure that enables therapists to McGoldrick and Gerson, graphically represent family structure. It is very popular among 1985 family therapists. The genogram is essentially a visual map of family relationships. It contains factual information such as names, ages, deaths, divorces, etc., as well as relationships.
Marital Satisfaction Inventory This instrument is a self report designed to assess marital in, D. Snyder, 1981 teraction and marital distress. It includes 11 subscales . The inventory should be completed by both partners and results are graphed on a single pro?le so that partner differences can be identi?ed, discussed, and addressed in counseling.
