Is Supervisee Disclosure in Supervision Universal? Preliminary Cross-Cultural Evidence From US and Turkish Supervisee Samples

Abstract

This study tested the measurement invariance (MI) of the Supervisee Disclosure in Supervision Scale (SDSS) between U.S. (N = 211) and Turkish (N = 168) counseling supervisees. The SDSS, originally developed and validated with predominantly U.S. supervisees, assesses the likelihood of supervisees' supervision-related and counseling-related disclosure in supervision. We conducted the Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MGCFA) to test its configural, metric, and scalar invariance. Unfortunately, the configural invariance, the prerequisite for cross-group comparison, was not supported. These findings provide preliminary evidence that the SDSS does not measure the same underlying construct equivalently across these two cultures. This lack of invariance suggests that supervisee disclosure in supervision may be culturally situated rather than universal. Our results caution against direct cross-cultural comparisons using the SDSS and underscore the need for culturally grounded scale development and rigorous cross-cultural validation in supervision research.