Assessing mental health professionals' attitudes toward routine outcome monitoring across Eastern and Western cultures: an examination of invariance and latent mean differences†.

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the attitudes of mental health professionals towards Routine Outcome Monitoring (ROM) in Eastern and Western cultures.

Method: Two samples of American (N = 455) and Chinese (N = 505) mental health professionals completed the prevalent Monitoring and Feedback Attitudes Scale (MFA). We tested the measure's psychometric characteristics, measurement invariance, and latent mean difference across cultures.

Results: Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) found a two-factor structure of the MFA within both cohorts. The MFA subscales showed excellent internal consistency in both the Chinese and American samples. The MFA demonstrated partial scalar invariance between the two cultural groups, supporting the comparison of latent means among Chinese and American professionals. Chinese professionals perceived greater harm from ROM than their American counterparts.

Conclusions: The findings show that the MFA is a valid tool to evaluate and compare the US and Chinese mental health professionals' attitudes toward ROM, suggesting that the measure may be useful in both Eastern and Western cultures.