Measuring Organizational Cultural Competency: An Exploratory Factor Analysis

Purpose: Cultural competency is a core value of the social work profession and key to providing inclusive and efficacious services. As the United States population continues to diversify, it is important for agencies to strive for cultural competency and to provide services in-line with specific cultural values.

In 2014, the Latino population in the United States reached 55 million, a 1.15 million increase from 2013. Along with this increase, changes in migratory patterns has resulted in new destinations – many of which lack built-it formal and/or informal systems of care specifically targeting this population in ways that are culturally appropriate. Agencies serving Latina/o clients must ensure their services are not only linguistically appropriate, but also culturally appropriate. That is, agencies and providers must understand, address, and incorporate key aspects of Latino culture to provide acceptable and effective services for this population. As agencies provide services to a more diverse population, it is imperative that they have tools to help them evaluate and enhance the quality and kinds of services they provide as well as the cultural competence of the organization as a whole.

Methods: We used cross-sectional data collected from domestic violence and culturally-specific agencies serving Latina/o survivors of domestic violence in a southeastern state to test a study-developed, 33-item measure of organizational cultural competency (focused on the Latino community). Using purposive sampling techniques, the executive directors of 99 agencies across the state were invited to complete either a web-based or paper survey focused on the availability and delivery of domestic violence services for Latina/o survivors. Information was collected on agency-level topics such as community attitudes, outreach strategies, services, organizational policies, barriers to providing services, and cultural competency. The research team, community partners, and experts in the field developed, reviewed, and revised the survey and cultural competency measure before data collection. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the cultural competency items using Mplusversion 7 to test the factor structure of the measure.

Results: Seventy-eight directors completed the survey (78% response rate). Exploratory factor analysis resulted in the deletion of 15 items with poor factor loadings. A 4-factor model provided the best fit (x²= 145.76, CFI= 0.94, RMSEA= 0.09, SRMR= 0.04), with factor loadings ranging from .59-1.0. The total 18-item scale (α=0.92) and four subscales demonstrated strong reliability: (1) organizational practices [6 items, α=0.88], (2) service delivery strategies [5 items, α=0.84], (3) cultural knowledge and community engagement [5 items, α=0.91], and (4) critical awareness and reflection[2 items, α=0.96].

Implications: The organizational cultural competency measure shows promise. Future research should focus on further refining and evaluating the measure with larger, more representative samples using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.  Such a measure has the potential to enhance research focused on exploring promotors and barriers to organizational cultural competence. Further, agencies can benefit from using an organizational cultural competency measure to evaluate and guide practice. As the population continues to increase in diversity, it will be necessary for agencies to assess programming and implement changes when needed.