African American Stereotypes in the clinical judgment process of Rehabilitation Counselors
Rehabilitation counselors facilitate the Vocational Rehabilitation program (VR) and are responsible for determining the eligibility of applicants into the VR program. This decision is contingent upon the clinical judgment process. However, this process has been scrutinized as a result of the disparity in acceptance rates between African American and European American applicants. Research reveals evidence of racial bias in the clinical setting. This leads to the research question: What is the influence of African-Americans stereotypes in the clinical judgments of European American counselors and the acceptance rates of African Americans into the VR program? This paper will investigate the influence of African American stereotypes in the clinical judgments of Rehabilitation counselors across gender and racial groups (African American and European American) and how these relationships affect the acceptance rates of African American applicants into the VR program. The MCKAS survey will be dispersed to 200 African American and European American counselors from a state agency. MANOVA and the Spearman Correlation Test will be used to measure the differences between scores. In addition, the acceptance rates by race will be compared to determine the percentage of African Americans accepted into the VR program. It is hypothesized that: White counselors in comparison to Black Counselors will have lower test scores, thus lower number of acceptance rates and males in comparison to female counselors will have lower test scores, thus lower number of acceptance rates.
School:
Southern University and A&M College at Baton Rouge
Department:
Rehabilitation
Research Advisor:
Reginald Alston
Department of Research Advisor:
Rehabilitation Education
Year of Publication:
2003