Ethnic bias and assessment of family functioning

One of the critical challenges in cross cultural family therapy remains the clinicians' efforts to manage bias and accurately perceive the families they are working with. To date, this area has received little attention from researchers. This study examined the extent of ethnic bias in conducting cross cultural family assessments and the impact of family therapy training in remediating such bias.;Subjects for the investigation were 61 clinicians-in-training including 32 family therapy trainees and 29 psychology doctoral students. In this analogue study, first and third year trainees were presented with either "Anglo" or "Hispanic" variants of the same family therapy assessment session in an audiotape format. The trainees then evaluated the families using three instruments: (1) the Beavers Interactional Scales of Family Competence, (2) an investigator-designed questionnaire including diagnostic, prognostic, and attitudinal items, (3) and an open ended questionnaire requiring them to list family strengths.;Among primary results, a difference was found in the Anglo clinician's assessment of equivalent Hispanic and Anglo families. While this finding was congruent with a modest trend in the literature suggesting that race and ethnicity affect clinical assessment, the study was unusual in using families rather than individuals as a source of investigation. While definitive statements cannot be made regarding the direction of any bias evident, there does appear to be a strong trend suggesting that such bias diminishes as clinicians acquire greater training and experience. This trend was evident across both the family therapy and doctoral psychology groups. The idea that less experienced clinicians might be particularly misled by ethnic variables is consistent with the position of many transcultural clinicians. Such clinicians view increasing sensitivity and skill with cultural variables as part of the overall process of clinical maturation.