Handbook of Cross-Cultural and Multicultural Personality Assessment

Book excerpt: Throughout the world as in the United States, psychologists are increasingly being called upon to evaluate clients whose backgrounds differ from their own. It has long been recognized that standard personality and psychopathology assessment instruments carry cultural biases, and in recent years, efforts to correct these biases have accelerated. The Handbook of Cross-Cultural and Multicultural Personality Assessment brings together researchers and practitioners from 12 countries with diverse ethnic and racial identities and training to present state-of-the-art knowledge about how best to minimize cultural biases in the assessment of personality and psychopathology. They consider research methodology, the design and construction of standard objective and projective tests, the use of measures of acculturation, racial identity, and culture-specific tests, the social etiquette of service delivery, and the interpretation of test data for clinical diagnosis. Ranging widely through all the relevant issues, they share a common collective vision of how culturally competent services should be delivered to clients. The Handbook offers the first comprehensive view of a consistent approach to cultural competence in assessment--a necessary precursor of effective intervention. It will become an indispensable reference for all those whose practice or research involves individuals with different ethnic and racial identities.