ABSTRACT
Cultural bias in the delivery of mental health services has many faces, ranging from the very definition of DSM-IV psychiatric symptomatology to services utilization, psychological assessment and diagnosis, and treatment (Rogler, Malgady, & Rodriguez, 1989). Underlying the issue of culturally competent or unbiased mental health practice is a more fundamental issue of potential bias in the research literature, presumably on which culturally competent services are predicated. Research, in turn, invariably is based on the statistical analysis of empirical data leading to pragmatic decisions such as whether one ethnic group is utilizing services less than another, whether an assessment instrument is culturally biased, or whether ethnic minorities have differential treatment outcomes relative to their nonminority counterparts. All statistical hypothesis testing is premised on the notion of the null hypothesis.
