Effects of Peer Support and Resource Sharing on Cultural-Linguistic Competency: A Longitudinal Study of Msw Students In a Bilingual Behavioral Health Program

Background: Across the nation, bilingual training programs are relatively sparse in social work education, yet the need for bilingual and multilingual services continues to grow. Few research studies exist on the impact of training bilingual social work students in cultural-linguistic competency. The present study used a longitudinal design to explore change among Spanish and Hmong-speaking MSW students who participated in a Bilingual and Bicultural Behavioral Health (BBB) Learning Community at a rural Hispanic-Serving Institution. The study aimed to answer the research questions: 1) Do participants in the BBB show collective growth in cultural-linguistic competency, peer support, and resource sharing over the 20 weeks in the Learning Community? 2) How do individuals differ meaningfully in their status and growth rate? 3) How are the growth rates of the three constructs correlated?

Methods: This study used a longitudinal design across 20 weeks of the BBB Learning Community. Each student who participated in the BBB program (N=30, 10 waves) completed a bi-weekly online survey measuring cultural linguistic competence (CLC), resource sharing, and peer support. The present study applied latent growth curve modeling (LGCM) to examine whether participants demonstrated significant collective growth in CLC, resource sharing (RS), and peer support (PS) over the 20 weeks. LGCM were estimated in R using the Lavaan package (Rosseel, 2012) with full information maximum likelihood (FIML) to accommodate intermittent non-response across waves. Robust maximum likelihood estimation (MLR) was applied to correct non-normality. A three-process parallel LGCM simultaneously estimated intercepts and slopes for CLC, PS, and RS, with all cross-construct covariance freely estimated.

Results: Given the exploratory nature of this study (N = 30), all findings are interpreted as preliminary. The mean growth rate of CLC was positive and statistically significant (β_slope = 0.023, p = .037). PS showed significant positive growth (β_slope = 0.028, p = .008) over 18 weeks. RS showed a positive but non-significant growth trend at the group level (β_slope = 0.017, p = .146). However, significant variance in slopes of RS indicated that while the group average was flat, individuals differed substantially in their RS trajectories (β = −0.071, p = .009). The 3-process parallel model estimated all cross-construct covariances simultaneously. Intercepts were significantly correlated across all three constructs (r = 0.40 to 0.44). Critically, the slope covariances revealed that CLC and RS growth rates were significantly coupled (r = 0.41, p = .033).

Conclusions: The present study showed that cultural-linguistic competency and peer support increased significantly over the 20 weeks in the Learning Community. MSW students who began the program with higher engagement on one dimension tended to begin higher on all three dimensions. Critically, students who grew faster on resource sharing also improved faster on cultural-linguistic competency due to the significantly coupled growth rates. Although further research is needed, this study illustrates the potential of bilingual social work education and its relationship to the development of core social work competencies.