Development and validation of the expanded school psychology multicultural competence scale.

As the population of the United States becomes increasingly diverse, multicultural competency in school psychological practice grows in salience and importance. Based on previous work done by Malone et al. (2015), the expanded School Psychology Multicultural Competence Scale (SPMCS-E) is intended to give researchers, practitioners, trainers, and supervisors a tool to self-assess multicultural competency as validity evidence is gathered to support its use and interpretation. Areas of competency related to spirituality and religion; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, and other individuals with gender and sexually expansive identities (LGBTQ+ individuals); and social justice are discussed and were added to the SPMCS-E. Validity evidence based on test content and internal structure are included in the present study. A subject matter expert (SME) panel of six experts rated items and domain definition. According to SMEs, the SMPCS-E has strong validity evidence related to test content. To gather validity evidence based on internal structure, the SPMCS-E was distributed to school psychology trainees and professionals (N = 969) and exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were conducted. Two factors were retained from EFA with a randomly partitioned sample (n = 386): applied knowledge and skills, and awareness of cultural influences/cultural humility. The two factors were found to have a strong correlation, several items had salient cross loadings, and pattern coefficients tended to be considerably smaller than structure coefficients. This pattern of results suggests the presence of a strong general factor. Based on EFA results, a CFA with a randomly partitioned sample (n = 583) was used to evaluate three competing models: single factor, two correlated factors, and bifactor. Model fit indices and examination of loadings and structure indicated that a two correlated factors structure was the best fitting; however, the two factors were highly correlated and had limited interpretive relevance. Bifactor indices noted that the SPMCS-E is essentially unidimensional and has strong internal consistency. Implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.