The assignment In this final assignment you need to do the following: Summarise the research article on ‘Therapist self-disclosure and the therapeutic relationship: a phenomenological study from the...

The assignment

In this final assignment you need to do the following:

1. Summarise the research article on ‘Therapist self-disclosure and the therapeutic relationship: a phenomenological study from the client perspective’ which you will find at the end of this EMA guidance (500 words).


2. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the approach to research contained in this article (1000 words).


3. Conclude by discussing which understanding of the counselling relationship you feel most drawn to and why (450 words).

(25% of total assessment, 2000 words)

There are three parts to the assignment, so the student notes here are presented in three sections.

Part 1

In the first part of this assignment (500 words), you are asked to summarise the research paper entitled ‘Therapist self-disclosure and the therapeutic relationship: a phenomenological study from the client perspective’, (Audet, C. T. & Everal, R. D., 2010), which is provided at the end of this EMA guidance. You will need to read through the article several times and make notes on the main points. Your summary should answer the following questions:

• What is the main purpose or aim of the research?


• What is the methodology adopted in this study?


• What are the main results?


• How are the results discussed and what are the main implications and conclusions drawn from the study?

These points will help you to structure your summary. To avoid plagiarism, be careful not to ‘copy and paste’ from the article, but describe and summarise the main information and conclusions from the research in your own words.

It is important that your summary of the research article looks different and is written with a different purpose than the synopsis of the research provided by the article abstract. Whilst an abstract usually offers a short (often less than 250 words) but concise ‘preview’ for the reader of what to expect in a research article, its main aim is to ‘sell’ the article and to make the relevance of the research recognisable for the audience. In contrast, you are asked here to set your own course in describing the key aspects of the research in a more substantial manner (see bullet points above). This means that your summary should not be restricted to the information provided in the article abstract, but include issues that you think are important to understand and appraise the presented research and its implications.

In the following example, you will see how such a summary might look in comparison to the brief information provided by an abstract of a research article. Read through the extract below first, which is taken from the abstract of a research paper and contains some information on aim and purpose of the study (Salvio, M.A. (1992), ‘The strength of the therapeutic alliance in three treatments for depression’,
Psychotherapy Research, 2(1), 31-36).

Abstract:

‘The present study used the Working Alliance Inventory (WAI) and the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory (BLRI) to examine the nature of the therapeutic alliance in three treatments for depression, Focused Expressive Psychotherapy, Cognitive Therapy, and Supportive/Self-Directed Therapy.’

In contrast, have a look at the following summary which you will see provides a more detailed account of this part of the article (introduction/study aims).

Summary:

The aim of this quantitative study on the therapeutic relationship in psychotherapy for depression was threefold. The first aim was to compare findings from two instruments that are based on different theoretical conceptualisations of the relationship between client and therapist. The ‘Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory’ (BLRI) is measuring the degree to which the therapist shows the core conditions from person-centred therapy (empathic understanding, unconditional regard, congruence). The ‘Working Alliance Inventory’ is derived from the concept of working alliance, defined as the personal bond between client and therapist and their commitment to work together on shared goals and tasks. The second aim was to investigate how the therapeutic relationship develops in the course of the therapy. Thirdly, the study wanted to compare relationship pattern and development across three different therapy forms for depression, focused expressive psychotherapy (a Gestalt-based group therapy), cognitive therapy, and supportive/self-directed therapy (with self-help elements). Having two scales in the study can help to establish the discriminatory validity of the instruments (do they indeed measure two separate constructs? To what degree do they overlap?). However, it can be questioned whether a more open, qualitative research approach (e.g. with interviews, observations) would have been more beneficial to provide insight into the ‘nature of the therapeutic alliance’ (overall study aim as stated in the article abstract).

Part 2

In the second part of this assignment (1000 words), you are asked to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the approach to research contained in the article, in other words, to provide some critical evaluation of this approach. You will see that the article is based on a qualitative approach to research. As such, it relates particularly to the material which you will find in chapter 14 of the module text by John McLeod (‘Process research’). You can specifically draw on the section ‘What is qualitative research?’ (general overview of qualitative methods) as well as on some discussion in this chapter of how to evaluate qualitative research. For example, how can we assess the validity and reliability of the findings of qualitative research studies? Does a qualitative article merely represent the views of the author, or can it claim a wider ‘truth value’? In which ways is research shaped by the qualities and personality of the researcher (see Activity 14.2 in the textbook: The concept of researcher reflexivity)? The list of ‘Quality criteria for qualitative research’ in the information box in Chapter 14 might also be helpful for your critical evaluation of qualitative research.

In order to consider both the strengths and weaknesses of the qualitative approach, it would be useful to think about the contrast offered by a quantitative approach to research and you will find this discussed in Chapter 13 of the module text by Michael Barkham and Meg Barker (‘Outcomes research’). The material provided in this chapter will help you to develop your critical evaluation. The information box on ‘Qualitative and Quantitative Research’ contains an overview of the key differences between qualitative and quantitative research. You will find relevant discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches throughout Chapter 13 and Chapter 14, and research findings from both approaches are also discussed in audiovisual excerpt 20. Be careful, though, not to spend too much of your time comparing and contrasting the two approaches in general – keep your focus on the qualitative approach and its strengths and weaknesses.

Part 3

Following from the presentation of issues around the therapeutic alliance in the research paper, you should conclude the assignment (in the remaining
450 words) by reflecting on which theoretical understanding of the relationship between client and counsellor you feel most drawn to and why. If you look back over the six main approaches to counselling which have been covered in this module, you will appreciate that the different approaches have different ways of understanding the counselling relationship. For example, the classical psychoanalytic approach would see the counselling relationship as a parent-child-type relationship enabling the client to work through early experiences in the here-and-now with the therapist, whilst the person-centred approach would see it much more as an adult-adult relationship in which both parties work together in a relatively equal way to deal with the presenting concerns (see, for example, the discussion in the Section 12.3 entitled ‘A relationship typology’ in Chapter 12).

You will want to draw particularly on Chapter 12, ‘The therapeutic relationship’, but also on the material throughout the entire module that gives you insight into how different counselling approaches understand and make use of the counselling relationship (especially Chapter 4 to Chapter 9 and audiovisual excerpts 5 to 14). You might also reflect on your own practical experiences and how you relate to people and you should refer to what you have learned throughout the module about the different ways the counselling relationship can be understood. Again, as in TMA 02 and TMA 03, it is appropriate here to use the first-person (‘I’) when explaining which conceptualisation of the counselling relationship you feel most drawn to and why.

Overall, your assignment should be no more than
2000 words
in length and you should structure your assignment into the three sub-sections as we have done here, with subheadings for each section. For this assignment you do not need to write a separate introduction and conclusion for the assignment as a whole, just go straight into section (a); section (c) is your conclusion.

On a separate page, we would like you to write a few sentences (not more than 50 words) saying:

• what you found interesting about this assignment


• what you found difficult about this assignment.

The 50 words are part of the overall word count of the assignment so make sure you leave enough words for this. It should be written in the first-person (‘I found this interesting…’ and ‘I found this difficult…’).

Things you found interesting might include such things as the content of the article, thinking about the issue of self-disclosure in counselling, and learning about qualitative research. Things you found difficult might include such things as summarising the key information, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative research, and expressing why a certain approach to the counselling relationship appeals to you.

It is important that you complete this activity, as it will help you to think about your interests and your strengths and weaknesses and help the marker to understand what areas you found easier or struggled with.