<p>Dear Dr. Torres Rivera,</p><p> This manuscipt is being re-submitted after revisions. Please note tht the original resubmission was in AUgust of 2015 (see original letter below). Thanks,</p><p> </p><p>8/24/15</p><p>Dear Dr. Torres-Rivera,</p><p> </p><p>Thanks you for your invitation to revise and resubmit our manuscript “Examining Basic Helping Skills in Cross-Cultural Counseling in the U.S<strong>.</strong>” Below please find our summary of the current revisions for our manuscript. We have addressed the points made by you and the reviewers. We hope you are pleased with our work!</p><p> </p><p>Thank you very much for your consideration of our manuscript.</p><p> </p><p>Sincerely,</p><p>Collie Conoley, Ph.D.,</p><p>Melissa L. Morgan Consoli, Ph.D.</p><p>Heidi Zetzer, Ph.D.</p><p>University of California Santa Barbara</p><p>Elisa Hernandez, Ph.D.</p><p>Rafael Hernandez, Ph.D.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><strong>Reviewer Comments</strong></p><p><strong>Action taken</strong></p><p><strong>APA Style</strong>: “Grammatical/Punctuation errors; APA formatting errors for citing references, formatting on reference page/s, structural errors such as some titles bolded and others not bolded and a sub-title should not be left at the bottom of a page (pg. 6-Procedures).”</p><p>1. Proofed entire article for grammar and punctuation errors. 2. Corrected APA formatting errors in references 3. Bolded all titles and corrected all headings</p><p><strong>Approached problem not clearly defined</strong>: “This is an important area of research. The purpose section of the manuscript does not really define the purpose of the research so much as it provides a rational for the study.”</p><p>This has been clarified in the document. The problem we address is the need for cultural competence in counseling skills, which we more clearly state in the introduction section. Also, we now consistently describe our purpose in the abstract, the beginning of the literature introduction, just before the methods section, and at the beginning of the discussion section. Our purpose was to evaluate the basic counseling skills in the context of cross-cultural counseling for Mexican American clients working with European American counselors.</p><p><strong>Issues and Questions</strong> <strong>addressed were important to area:</strong> “Issues and questions were simplistic and general and several key independent variables were missing”</p><p>The quantitative dependent measures and the qualitative open-ended questions evaluating each of the basic skills were carefully. The measures were selected to address the most fundamental experiences of a client.  Issues of trust, openness, empathy, feeling valued seemed central to us and fit with counseling tradition. We welcome suggestions of other questions that could be asked in the future.</p><p> </p><p>We have made clearer that several key dependent variables produced no variability so they contributed nothing to the understanding of the basic skills. This issue has been clarified in each section.</p><p>“The authors do recognize the<br> limitations of generalizability across subcultures.  One suggestion would<br> be to indicate in the title that the study is limited to the Mexican<br> American client-European American counselor dyad.”</p><p> </p><p>Changed title and abstract to reflect that it is specific to Mexican-American/European American dyad</p><p><strong>Literature review: “</strong>There is some theoretical framework; yet key points and/or independent variables were not included.  Several cited references were over 37 years old.“ <strong></strong></p><p>The theoretical framework for this study is built on two foundations: a) the theoretical and cultural origins of the basic helping skills (client-centered, eurocentric), and b) the principles of cultural competence (awareness, knowledge, and skills).  The dearth of research on culturally competent skills is the chief rationale for this study. These two major influences, and how they information the rationale, are now thoroughly described in the Introduction of the paper.</p><p> </p><p>The Introduction now also includes a careful review of recent research on culturally diverse client perspectives on the helping skills. Note that we refer to Hill and Lent (2006) who identified a gap in the literature for investigating the role of culture on the relevance, credibility, and effectiveness of helping skills and our own recent extensive review of the literature led to the identification of just two studies on culturally diverse client perceptions of different types of helping skills (Li &amp; Kim, 2004; Dewell &amp; Owen 2015).</p><p> </p><p>We also report the research that is available on multicultural client perspectives on specific helping skills, which to date centers on self-disclosure. See our discussion of the research on self-disclosure and references to Burkard, Knox, Groen, Perez, &amp; Hess, 2006, Kim et al., 2003, and Chang &amp; Berk, 2009 in the Introduction.</p><p> </p><p>Hence, the literature review has been updated and focuses specifically on the helping skills (the independent variables). </p><p> </p><p>Finally, the Intro concludes with a clear rationale for the study.</p><p><strong>Theoreticl background:</strong> Several key figures and specific therapies were mentioned; however, information was very general wherein authors made a statement instead of providing supporting information.</p><p>We added details of the two studies that were pertinent to our study in investigating counseling skills; Li &amp; Kim (2004), and Dewell &amp; Owen (2015). Additionally we added more information about the call for cultural competence skills in counseling in the literature review with specific references. Please let us know if there are key figures that you have in mind.</p><p><strong>Methodology: “</strong>Clients should have evaluated session with counselor before viewing tape and then possibly after viewing tape. </p><p>The "Helping Skills Evaluation Measures" section for ratings and table did not clear up information as table appears to be missing data.” <strong></strong></p><p>Sorry that this was not communicated clearly. Clients did evaluate the session immediately after the session. Then the individual skills were viewed and rated. The clients did not see the session video prior to rating the session. To make this information more prominent we added a heading on the paragraph in the methods section “<strong>Measure administration.”</strong></p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong>The Table 1 now has been redesigned to include all the information and specify where missing data exists. We added footnotes to more clearly communicate what the information means.</strong></p><p><strong>Connection between data and inferences drawn/Discussion</strong>: “It isn't bad; however, it needs edited and sharpened up and focused.” </p><p>We have attended to sharpening and focusing the connection between the data and inferences. We believe you will find it much improved.</p><p>Additionally, we have added a second table which provides definitions for all emergent categories and subcategories</p><p> </p><p>No other papers by Interamerican authors mentioned</p><p>Cited a reference from <em>Revista Interamericana</em></p><p><strong>Overall</strong>: “This might be okay for rough draft; however, there is too much missing from the literature review.  Your purpose was to examine basic helping skills in context of cross-cultural counseling; and yet, later, it was stated the purpose of the study was to identify particularly helpful as well as problematic skills for cross-cultural counseling.  Either way, basic helping skills may been seen as problematic regardless of socio-economic group because other significant independent variables factor into developing a trusting, working relationship between client and counselor.  The hypothesis needs to be reexamined, it is too general as well as including supporting information from literature review.”</p><p>Thank you for the opportunity to respond and revise. We have added to the literature review and more carefully stated the problem and purpose. We understand your concern about the complexities of extraneous variables upon the process of building a therapeutic relationship. We know that this is a beginning of a process. We are pleased that we have something to add to the multicultural counseling skills literature. We hope that we will facilitate more research in this important area!</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>