POSITION PAPER NO 4

Noor Aspariza bt Awang
0819996

“Since most of the assessment instruments in the market were made based on American culture, Muslim counsellors should not use standardized assessment instrument at all. Discuss”.


Assessment is a diagnostic process that measures an individual’s behaviours, motivators, attitudes, or other selected qualities. In order to be valuable to individuals and organizations, an assessment must be accurate and objective. In addition, it must meet scientific criteria, as well as provide meaningful insight.
In addition, assessment gives organizations more than just data and information and it opens doors to strategic change and helps measure progress. Assessment can lead to increased self-awareness and inspire people to learn and grow.


The purpose of assessment done in counselling especially is to gain better understanding of their client. Assessment can be done in a two way; quantitative and qualitative method. Each of it has the unique significance in getting the data or result of something. In addition, there are several types of assessment that applicable for counsellor to have better understanding about their clients including clinical interview, standardizes test, behavioural observation, mental status examination, analysis of cases record, geneograms drawing and also journal. Since most of the assessment instruments in the market were made based on American culture, I’m strongly agree that Muslim counsellors should not use standardized assessment instrument at all based on several point.


Firstly, the assessment should be based on community norms, if in Malaysia, counsellor should used instrument to assess their client based on Malaysian community norm and culture context. It more relevant rather than only based on the American culture. Why Muslim counsellor should not focus and using the American instrument somehow is that when we examine on American instrument, the instrument that we have might just focus on the one group only in the western especially American country but what happened in Malaysia, we are multiracial country, where we have diversity in culture and religion. We have Muslim, Chinese, Indian and other religion believer. Hence, to understand our client we should design the instrument that more realistic to their culture.


Secondly, some of western instrument pattern not in line with the Muslim life. On the other words, some instruments are not applicable to all races and religion in terms of the question pattern assessment. Counsellor may change some of the instrument pattern to suit with the Muslim accordance and stick on some that might applicable to our Muslim culture especially. It means that, we should not automatically eliminate or not using all the assessment from western and assume that western model of assessment not work with racial and minorities without empirical testing.


According to Leong and Brown (1995), when it involve the cultural diversity, we need to continue to study the cultural validity of western based models of career counselling and development with culturally different populations. From their opinion, I made an assumption that, we should not deleting and assume that all assessment model by western are useless without done the testing first. However, we ensure the effectiveness of our assessment, we need to develop and create the most appropriate culture-specific variable en line with Islam for Muslim especially and culture norm in Malaysia that likely to influence the development behaviour of racial and ethnic minorities.


For example, in assessing our client personality, we have several assessment that relate to that such as super theory and Freud theory, as we already know, Freud theory is more on to the sexual orientation theory and of course their assessment is based on that. When the counsellor used that assessment to identify their client personality especially Muslim identity, it will create some uneasy feeling and might bring the uncomfortable result later. So what is needed to do is that, counsellor should not use the standardized assessment especially based on the American culture perse.


Another example is regarding the goal setting of assessment. The goal set from the assessment must be realistic with the client culture. What happened is that, if the counsellor only based on the American instrument, it might be having a high expectation of goal towards their client and not suit with the client culture. So, what worse is that, the assessment goal will not really achieved and successful by the clients. What important is that, in establishing the counselling and assessment goal that consistent with the client world view, culture value orientation, and cultural practises.


In conclusion, counsellor job is not an easy job. They tried their best in helping people by giving an insight to them in setting their problem. The challenge is that, when it comes to the diverse client culture background where the counsellor should master in cross cultural counselling and to provide more dynamic and successful intervention and approach in handling their client. Assessment is needed in assessing their client well. Sometimes, the American assessments instrument is not applicable to all people in diverse culture and religion. Standardized assessment instrument seem effective if all country having a same culture like happened in America. But, that not happened! In view of this finding, modification should be made by the counsellor in using such measure of instrument to avoiding committing client diagnostic error. In fact, the recognition and attention to what instrument that might be used and might not be used in assessing client is the counsellor competent in doing their cross-cultural counselling effectively.