Assessing Supervision's Clinical and Multicultural Impacts: The Supervision Outcome Scale's Psychometric Properties

• Published in: Training and education in professional psychology Vol. 8; no. 3; pp. 189 - 195
• Main Authors: Tsong, Yuying, Goodyear, Rodney K.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Educational Publishing Foundation 01-08-2014; American Psychological Association
• Subjects: Female; Human; Male; Multiculturalism; Professional Competence; Professional Supervision; Psychometrics; Rating Scales; Test Construction; Test Validity; Therapeutic Alliance; supervision outcome; instrument development; multicultural competence; working alliance; supervision
• ISBN: 9781433818707; 1433818701
• ISSN: 1931-3918; 1931-3926
• DOI: 10.1037/tep0000049

Relatively few measures are available to assess supervision's impacts on supervisees and the clients they serve, despite the potential value of information from those measures in improving supervisors' practice. This article describes the development of the Supervision Outcome Scale (SOS) and reports its psychometric properties. Results from the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with 2 independent samples of counseling and clinical psychology doctoral students indicated that SOS measures 2 distinct constructs related to impacts of supervision: clinical competence outcome (decrease in client symptoms, improvement in supervisee competence) and multicultural competence outcome (improvement in supervisee multicultural competence). SOS was also found to have adequate internal reliability and concurrent validity, as it correlates significantly with supervisory working alliance. Research and training implications on SOS as a useful tool to track both supervisee and supervisor development are discussed.