Background & Purpose: This presentation will describe the use of Milton Bennett's Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) to analyze logs that were submitted by behavioral health practitioners who participated in PRIME (Partners Reaching to Improve Multicultural Effectiveness), an intensive training program on diversity and intercultural competency. The presentation will show how the DMIS can be used to evaluate the impact of the training on the development of intercultural sensitivity among the training participants over a nine-month period.

Methods: Program participants wrote monthly reflective logs about cultural experiences that occurred between training sessions. The six stages of intercultural sensitivity described in the DMIS were used as the basis for coding log entries. These stages are on a continuum from ethnocentric to ethnorelative stages. Two members of the evaluation team read the logs to ensure reliability. They coded each participant's log for each session separately and met subsequently to share their results. They discussed places where they disagreed on the codes and came to a consensus about the appropriate code.

Results: The findings over the 9-month training period show that the development of intercultural sensitivity is, for the most part, a non-linear process in which one makes intermittent reversions to earlier levels and moves forward in spurts. The results also demonstrate that by the time the last log was completed; most of the participants were in one of the ethnorelative stages of intercultural sensitivity, regardless of the level at which they started.

Implications: Employing training participants' logs can be a useful tool for understanding the process of intercultural sensitivity and assessing the impact of diversity training for behavioral health practitioners. They also offer a means to examine how training participants attempt to apply diversity content from the training to their practice of behavioral health services.