Assessing Multicultural Competence of Counsellors in Public Universities in Ghana

A person’s cognition defines the cultural mindset, religious beliefs and way of life. Culture affords its adherents with a theoretical basis for the understanding of sickness and emotive misery. This study, therefore, aimed at assessing multicultural competence of counsellors in the public universities in Ghana. The study adopted the descriptive survey design and mainly questionnaire (Multicultural Competence Questionnaire, [MCQ]) to obtain data. A sample of 45 counsellors was used for the study comprising 25 male counsellors and 20 female counsellors. The study used descriptive statistical tools (means and standard deviations) to analyse data obtained. The study revealed that counsellors sampled perceived their cultural competency to be low as measured on all sections (Knowledge, Skills and Awareness). This low cultural competence is portrayed by looking at the overall means on the sections as well as the overall mean (2.34) of the MCQ whose mean scores obtained were lower than the standard benchmark (2.50). 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 about Ghanaian cultural beliefs and ethnic diversity to increase their competence. Also, multicultural counselling should be infused in counselling programmes and training in Ghana.