About research

Counselling Research

Weekly Learning Record #37

Elena Stavreva

Doing a research in counselling can be a good practice for the counsellor the find out further and understand deeper their position within the framework of their present work, as well as, find areas for further development in their work.

There are different types of research studies which give a different perspective on either the essence, the quality of the work, the specific counselling or therapeutic approach or the quantity of, for example, how much progress is done in certain area under certain circumstances.

In the context of what McNabb (2008) writes quantitative methods of research supply more and different amount of data which is related to describing and using an inductive approach to drawing outcomes on research. Therefore factors as data collection, observation, having a hypothesis which will be accepted or rejected are important factors. The inductive research starts 'from the bottom-up' and the data from the participants is used to generate a theory. On the other hand and 'spectrum', the deductive 'reasoning' and research presupposes not only description but also further analysis and undersanding of a phenomena. The researcher studies theories and what others have done so far. A typical trait for a qualitative research would be the way data is collected. This happens mainly through focus groups, individual and group interviews, analysis of documents, discourse and/or artifacts. The research looks deeply inside individuals and meanings and how thsese meanings are created.

Coolican (2004) argues that reliability and validity related to the effect of a research are quite crucial for supporting or rejecting the information that comes with a research.

Moreover, for Dallos and Vetere (2005) the intentions and aims for the research are an important part as they can be more general and promote the practice of research or be more specific and used to reflect on counsellor's/psychotherapist's practice and evaluate functions, use and changes within a specific framework or therapeutic context.

From here one can consider the sense and some of the benefits that qualitative and quanitative research methodologies provide the public with.

To the description of the type of data used Dallos and Vertere (2005) add idiographic, subjective and internal states (thought, feelings, inner talk) for the qualitative research. While, for the quantitative, they describe the data as nomothetic, objective and the emphasis on external states such as behaviour, for instance.

McNabb comments, furthermore, on the importance of measurment and how the positivist approach became initailly 'an attack to reasoning' and the need to change or add to the metaphysical view of phenomena. Having in mind, though, the complexity of cultural, geographical, linguistic, etc context of counselling and psychotherapy it seems more acceptable to aim towards a combined approach as the hermeneutical. This can draw benefits from several perspective of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Some of them, according to what McNabb's comments (2008) are understanding and interpretation not only of texts and documents but the overall complexity of human communication and understanding of the context of these interactions. The use of quantitaive research methodologies can be helpful in application with a larger group, it can be used to define some norms or what is 'normal'. The benefit of using a qualitative method can be in discovering more in-depth and specifically focused on context, language and topic, like for example, some specifics in bereavement counselling (as shown in the reading text we had for this session).

Word count: 545 Date: 13.04.2019

Bibliography

Coolican, H. (2004) Research Methods and Statistics in Psychology. Hugh Coolican

England: Hodder Arnold (Fourth Edition)

Cruz, R. (2014) 'Reading and Evaluating Quantitative Research in Body Psychotherapy' (Online) Available at https://www.academia.edu/17758934/Reading_and_Evaluating_Quantitative_Researc h_in_Body_Psychotherapy

(accessed April 2019)

Dallos, R. and Vetere, A. (2005) Researching Psychotherapy and Counselling. England: Open University Press

McNabb, D. (2008), Research Methods in Public Administration and Nonprofit Management Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches. New York, London: M.E. Sharpe, Inc (Second Edition)