Assessing multicultural competence of counsellors in public universities in Ghana

Abstract

Multicultural issues are undeniably part of counselling. The growing ethnic inclusion in Ghanaian public universities highlight counsellors’ need to be trained to deliver proficient and appropriate service area to accommodate the needs of clients in the future. The main aim of this study was to assess counsellor multicultural competencies and find cultural-contextual factors influencing counselling as well as investigate possible association(s) among counsellors’ cultural competence domains. The study adopted the descriptive survey design and mainly questionnaire to obtain data. A sample of 45 counsellors was used for the study comprising 25 male counsellors and 20 female counsellors. These counsellors were selected from four public universities in Ghana. Generally, counsellors from the selected public universities were found to have a low multicultural counselling competence. The results of the one-way multivariate analysis (MANOVA) test indicated that there was no statistically significant difference in counsellors’ multicultural competence based on gender. The results of the study showed Ghanaian cultural beliefs informs the counselling technique selection during the counselling process. Also, the study showed that cultural-contextual factors improve counselling process. From the results obtained, it is recommended among others that counsellors should capitalise on the low multicultural counselling competence to attend multicultural awareness training programme pertaining to Ghanaian cultural beliefs and ethnic diversity in order to increase their competence. Also, multicultural counselling should be infused in counselling programmes and training in Ghana.