Assessment Bias and Cultural Competence

Bias, at the most abstract level, is related to what Hall (1997) called "cultural malpractice," an increasing failure of professional psychology to be socially relevant. Institutionalized bias in professional psychology results from continued affirmation of a Eurocentric worldview expressed in research procedures minimizing the importance of cultural differences and treating culture as a distal rather than a proximal variable. Remediation for cultural/racial/ethnic bias must be systemic and occur initially in research demonstrations and standards. The availability of consensual research standards for major ethnic minority populations provides a formal means to reduce bias in present and future research (Council of National Psychological Associations for the Advancement of Ethnic Minority Interests [CNPAAEMI], 2000). The juxtaposition of bias and competence begins with descriptions of multicultural research technology for bias reduction. I describe several independent sets of existing research guidelines for multicultural populations in this chapter.