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Diversity and Oppression Scale
The Diversity and Oppression Scale (DOS) measures student learning and perceptions on topics of cultural diversity and oppression. It consists of 25 items and is divided into four subscales: cultural diversity self-confidence, diversity and oppression, social worker/client congruence, and social worker responsibilities. These subscales were originally chosen based on alignment with the 2008 Educational Policies and Accreditation Standards endorsed by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), which noted a strong emphasis on the need for diversity and multicultural awareness.
This practice of actively recognizing diversity and the importance of multicultural competence in practice is ubiquitous across the mental health professions. Leading professional organizations, including counseling, psychology, and social work, have developed training and preparation standards requiring that professionals-in-training are culturally competent. The DOS was established to meet the need of ensuring that students were being adequately assessed on their learning of these topics. This entry reviews the establishment of multicultural practice guidelines, the development of the DOS, and how this scale is used to uphold the highest level of multicultural competence within training programs.
Cultural Competence
Historically, the impact of factors, such as native language, religious affiliation, and racial identity, was not often considered to be relevant in mental health assessment. In fact, it was not until the late 1990s that mental health researchers began discussing the influence of culture on topics ranging from mental health stigma to psychological symptomatology. It was around this time that initial drafts of various multicultural practice guidelines began to emerge to ensure that practitioners were infusing an individual’s cultural context into their conceptualizations and interventions. As an extension of this effort, many major mental health program accreditation bodies (e.g., Council on Social Work Education [CSWE], Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs, and the American Psychological Association’s Commission on Accreditation) have begun to utilize these guidelines to inform their educational standards for new practitioners.
Oppression
While efforts have been made to increase mental health professionals’ understanding of diversity, oppression has proven to be a more ambiguous topic to teach. This is in part, due to the fact that many argue that learning about oppression is fruitless without also learning how to actively challenge oppressive systems. However, many in the mental health field have noted that the nature of mental health work leaves its researchers and clinicians in strong positions to aid in combating social injustice and oppression. Because of this, along with instruction on cultural diversity, accrediting bodies and mental health organizations have begun to promote instruction and training on recognizing oppression and its effects on mental health.
The Diversity and Oppression Scale
Once the importance of multicultural competence and social justice training was established, researchers began the process of determining the best way to accurately measure learning outcomes to ensure these topics were being adequately taught to and upheld by mental health professionals. The DOS emerged as one of the social work field’s answers to this need.
The DOS was the first assessment of its kind to incorporate content areas directly from CSWE’s accreditation standards. It is from these standards that the DOS derives its two main themes: the responsibility of mental health professionals to actively address cultural diversity in training, learning, and practice and the obligation to participate in and promote social justice efforts. These competencies are assessed based on four factors: (a) cultural diversity self-confidence and awareness, (b) diversity and oppression, (c) social worker/client congruence, and (d) social worker responsibilities in diversity.
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