Date of Award

2-2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Graduate Department of Clinical Psychology

First Advisor

Winston Seegobin, Psy.D.

Second Advisor

Kristie Knows His Gun, Psy.D.

Third Advisor

Kathleen Gathercoal, Ph.D.

Abstract

With a vastly growing diverse population, the current focus on diversity-informed assessment has led to research on whether established instruments are reliable to utilize with specific populations. The American Indian/Alaska Native population (AI/AN) is often a group that is underrepresented in various assessments. The BASC-3 is an important assessment in psychoeducational evaluations thus, the goal of the study is to determine whether the BASC-3 is a culturally reliable assessment to use with AI/AN in educational setting.

Utilizing the computer program Cocron we compared Cronbach alpha levels across three groups (Native Americans, White, manualized clinical sample) and conducted t-test to compare raw score mean differences between AI/AN and the White comparative group, as well as between AI/AN and the manualized normative sample. Significant differences in reliability occurred in single scales between the White comparative sample and the manualized normative sample, and between the AI/AN group and the comparative group. Most significantly there were raw score mean differences across multiple scales between the AI/AN group and the normative sample. Overall, results suggested the BASC-3 may not be able to accurately assess the AI/AN population. Future research would benefit from a larger sample size of AI/AN participants in order to determine appropriate norms for this population.

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