Kimberly Peet

The final report of my ORCA project is one of success! I was able to complete a thorough meta-analysis of 39 previous studies on the effectiveness of multicultural training on a therapist’s competence in dealing with ethnically diverse cliental. After quantitatively coding each and every article (these 37 were the most fitting out of hundreds that were looked at for inclusion), I transformed the effect sizes so that they were all d values. That way, I was able to statistically combine them to find an overall effect. This effect size was .32! I know that may be just jargon, but that is a good thing! This shows that there is a positive relationship between the kinds of classes and experience a trainee has on their effectiveness as a therapist.

While this may seem like common sense, of course more education leads to better practice, being able to quantify the logic makes it much more powerful. This way, there is justification in universities and professions in requiring that their future employees undergo certain kinds of training.

After finishing my project, I went on to present it at several psychological conferences. I gave an oral presentation at the Utah Conference of Undergraduate Research, during which I spoke for 15 minutes about the meta-analysis and then answered questions from peers and professionals. Later, I presented the project as a poster at the Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists convention. I did another poster presentation here at BYU during the MSE conference. We also plan to go the Denver to participate in the NAME conference, in which I will be delivering another oral presentation on this project. Until then, my poster is hanging up in the McKay Building of Education.

Overall, doing this study has helped me to really develop my skills as a researcher. Doing all the statistical work probably took the most time but it was really a lot of fun, and it helped me see the kinds of things that I will be doing for part of my career. In psychology there is so much research that has to be done. You can’t just be a counselor, if you want some recognition you need to do something to be published. I really like this part of psychology anyways. The possibility of discovering new ideas, of helping businesses or organizations to be more efficient is gratifying.

Thank you very much for you support while I took on this study. I could not have done it without you!