Development and Psychometric Assessment of the Intentions to Discuss Race in Psychotherapy Scale

Background Measuring clinicians’ intentions to discuss race and racism with racially and ethnically minoritized (REM) clients may offer an empirically supported and more feasible alternative to objectively measuring clinician behavior.Objective The current study builds and validates a scale measuring clinicians’ intentions to ask about race and racism within psychotherapy.Method The Intentions to Discuss Race in Psychotherapy Scale (IDRPS) was developed following a multi-step development and evaluation process. Items were generated from the theory of planned behavior, then reviewed by content area experts and members of the target population. The final scale was administered to community mental health therapists (N = 256) across two waves of data collection. A three first-order factor and one second-order factor model was run to assess the fit of the measure with its theoretical basis. This included the three theorized subscales as first-order latent factors and a general intentions second-order latent factor. Analyses also examined discriminative and predictive validity, internal consistency, and sensitivity to change.Results Two items were excluded based on corrected item-total correlation, so the final IDRPS included 13 items. A theoretically driven, three first-order latent variable and one second-order latent variable model that allowed for two items to covary demonstrated excellent fit to the data. The final scale also demonstrated acceptable discriminative and predictive validity, internal consistency, and sensitivity to change.Conclusions The IDRPS holds promise as a theoretically driven measurement tool that can be used to evaluate multicultural competency and humility. There are practical implications based on the validation of this theory-driven scale, including the ability to evaluate the impact of trainings on clinicians’ intentions to talk about race in psychotherapy, with the goal being improved mental health outcomes of REM clients.