| Summary: | The purpose of this study was to examine predictors of client-counselor working alliance by understanding the effects of acculturation, perceived multicultural competence in counselors, and cultural value conflicts among South Asian women. The study was based on a nonrandom sample of women ages 18 to 39 years living in the United States who had completed at least three counseling sessions with a mental health professional in the last 5 years. Forty participants completed the online survey. Participants were recruited through personal contacts, social networking Internet websites, businesses, agencies, and places of worship. The majority of participants were highly educated, second-generation women descending from India or Pakistan. The full survey included an eligibility screening questionnaire, demographic questionnaire, the Working Alliance Inventory-Short Revised with an average mean of 4.82, Cross-Cultural Counseling Inventory-Revised with an average mean of 4.17 and reliability of excellent internal consistency reliability at ? = .92, Asian Values Scale-Revised with an average mean score of 2.44, and Cultural Value Conflicts Scale for South Asian Women with a mean score of 3.33. Participants reported experiencing working alliance often within the therapeutic relationship and experienced middle levels of Asian value adherence, falling in the integration level. The results indicated that participants experienced neutral to agreeable cultural value conflicts. Bivariate correlations indicated a statistically significant, moderate relationship between participants’ perceptions of counselors’ multicultural competence and their reports of working alliance in the therapeutic relationship. All other correlations reflected small to moderate effect sizes; however, these correlations were not statistically significant. Similarly, bivariate regression indicated that perceptions of multicultural counselor competence predicted the client-counselor working alliance to a moderate degree. From the results of hierarchical linear regression, acculturation and cultural value conflicts did not predict client-counselor working alliance even after accounting for perceived multicultural competence in counselors. The strongest predictor of client-counselor working alliance was the perceived multicultural competence of counselors. Probable reasons for the results of this study were discussed, limitations were identified, and suggestions for counseling practice were provided. Implications for the profession of counseling were made, and recommendations for future research were provided.
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