Cultural competence: implications for validity, measurement, and performance

Abstract

Findings from research in educational and cognitive psychology have shown that metacognition, defined as the monitoring and regulation of one’s knowledge and learning processes (Flavell, 1979), exerts substantial influence on individual performance (Swanson, 1990). The majority of this research, however, has only examined metacognitive skill as it applies to academic settings (Tobias & Everson, 2002; Veenman & Spaans, 2005). Other contexts, such as cross-cultural settings, may equally benefit from such applications. This dissertation contributes to research on metacognition in two distinct ways: (1) by examining the construct validity of a popular self-report measure of cultural metacognition, and (2) by examining the effects of a new performance-based measure of metacognitive skill on performance in cross-cultural settings. Results from Study 1 indicated that cultural metacognition is distinct from the Big Five, but that the measure of cultural metacognition is highly correlated with other subfacets of cultural competence. Results from Study 2 were largely inconclusive due to low statistical power and methodological concerns with the performance-based measure of metacognition, however, post hoc analyses illuminated some potential relationships between cross-cultural adaptation and personality. Implications for the use of measures of cultural metacognition in future research and organizational contexts are discussed.