A comparison of international and United States students in APA-accredited programs: Acculturation, counseling self-efficacy and role difficulties in supervisio

There has been a call in the multicultural supervision literature to enhance the understanding of minority students' unique training needs and develop appropriate theories and models of training for these students (Leong & Wagner, 1994; McNeill, Hom, & Perez, 1995). Although a few researchers have empirically examined differences between U.S. majority and minority students in multicultural supervision (Cook & Helms, 1988; Vander Kolk, 1974), virtually no empirical studies have been published on international students' training experiences.;The main purpose of the present study was to advance knowledge regarding the training needs of international students in APA-accredited programs in psychology. It was expected that due to issues associated with acculturation, international students' counseling self-efficacy and role difficulties in supervision would differ from U.S. students. The impact of multicultural supervision on these variables was also investigated. A secondary purpose of the study was to examine whether the present findings supported theory and previously obtained results on self-efficacy and acculturation. Multivariate analyses of variance, counseling hierarchical regression, and trend analyses were some of the statistical methods employed to answer these questions.;One hundred and fifty-one training directors at APA-accredited programs and internship sites distributed surveys to doctoral students in their programs or sites. Three hundred and twenty-one students completed surveys, resulting in a response rate of 57%. Of the students, 83% identified as U.S. citizens, 14% as international students, and 3% as permanent residents.;The results demonstrated that international students differed from U.S. students in that they reported less counseling self-efficacy than U.S. majority students and less Role Ambiguity than U.S. minority students. Acculturation had an impact on international students' training experiences; students who were more acculturated reported more counseling self-efficacy and less role difficulties. Furthermore, a good supervisory working alliance was positively associated with international students' counseling self-efficacy and negatively associated with their role difficulties, whereas multicultural supervision, that included a discussion of issues unique to international students, did not have an impact on these variables. Finally, the present results also provided some support for previous findings on counseling self-efficacy and acculturation, nation, but not for the theory of biculturalism.