Cultural Awareness of Sport Psychology Practitioners
Presentation
Overview
Overview
Description
Cultural competence, which can be defined as having the cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills to work effectively with difference (Sue & Sue, 2016), is important for the ethical and effective practice of Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology (SEPP) (Ryba, Stambulova, Si, & Schinke, 2013). Previous research suggests that SEPP professionals may have limited opportunities to develop cultural competence within their graduate training (Alleyne, 2007; Lee, 2016). With a growing emphasis on cultural competence and the high levels of diversity found within SEPP settings, examining the cultural awareness of SEPP professionals is a timely task. The purpose of the current study was to examine SEPP professionals’ cultural awareness, the first step of cultural competence (Sue & Sue, 2015), by asking about their beliefs and behaviors on issues related to cultural competence. SEPP practitioners (N=191) completed a survey about the influence of their cultural identities on their work and their beliefs about multicultural training. Analysis of the results indicated that across all cultural components examined (i.e., race, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, SES, nationality) the vast majority of respondents (67.5%-91.8%) indicated that these cultural components either did not influence their professional work at all or only somewhat. This may suggest that SEPP professionals were unaware of how their cultural identities can influence their work. Moreover, a majority of professionals reported that they believed it was either unethical to work with clients without multicultural training or only ethical to do so under rare circumstances (57.2%-67%). The majority of respondents also reported they never or rarely engaged in such consultations without knowledge in these areas (78.9%-95.8%). ANOVAs also indicated that among those with varying levels of post-secondary education, groups did not significantly differ regarding perceived impact that cultural components had on their work. They did not differ regarding their beliefs about the ethicality of working with diverse clients without having the sufficient cultural knowledge to do so. However, ANOVAs revealed that respondents who had specialized education and training in counseling/clinical psychology reported both race (p=.021) and gender (p=.04) to have significantly more of an impact on their work compared to those who specialized in performance enhancement. Taken together, these represent thought-provoking findings given that opportunities for cultural development appear to be limited in SEPP (Lee, 2016). Future research should examine where SEPP professionals receive training related to cultural competence and what the training entails.
