This blog expresses my personal views and experiences, and may or may not reflect reality as others see it. It documents my years living in Scotland, 2006-2023, working as Professor of Counselling at the University of Strathclyde, as well as my continuing experiences from Dec 2016 commuting between Scotland and California. It covers Emotion-Focused Therapy news, as well as my personal and scientific experiences, and poetry
Showing posts with label Research Training. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Research Training. Show all posts
BACP has been
running the Training the Trainers series again, so Sue Wheeler, John McLeod and
I have been doing our bits of that again, like an aging rock group trotting out
its greatest hits.Unfortunately, when I
went to book the Sunday night Caledonian Sleeper train down to London a couple
of weeks ago for my latest gig, I discovered that there were no sleeper berths
left, or even regular seats.This
presented a problem because I was scheduled to be at our Tuesday Parttime
Diploma course residential weekend in Stirling until 3pm on Sunday
afternoon.What to do?A bit desperately, I wondered whether there might
be seats available on one of the other Scottish sleeper trains. A bit of
research revealed that, yes, in fact, the Fort William sleeper train stops in
Westerton, only two stops up the line from Hyndland, closer even than Glasgow
Central. And sure enough, there were still berths available.
Fast forward to
yesterday:After a few hours at home
with Diane recovering from an intense but fulfilling weekend residential
weekend of training, I set off at 10:30pm, into the dark and rainy night.There was no one else at the Hyndland train
station but the guy in the ticket office, who knows me as one of the regulars, so
I chatted with him for a couple of minutes.The Milnegavie train arrived, so I got on it and took it two stops, 7
minutes, to Westerton, a commuter station next to the Firth-Clyde Canal.There the oddness began: The London Euston
train, on its way from Helensburgh Central and Dalmuir was listed as departing
from Platform 2, even though I had just gotten off the Milnegavie train,
heading in the opposite direction, on the same Platform.But that wasn’t all:The station board listed the train I was
waiting for as heading for “Edinburgh Only”; my Scotrail app said the same
thing.Hmm…
It was still
raining, but fortunately there was a covered shelter (although no chairs) on
Platform 2, so I settled in the wait the 25 minutes for my train.Several out-of-service ghost trains raced out
of the distance and disappeared into the night without even slowing down.The 23:10 Helensburgh train came and
went.Several other people
appeared.One had missed the Glasgow
Central Sleeper train, which leaves earlier than usual on Sunday nights, making
here a fellow refugee.She was just as
puzzled as I was.The other, a man in
his 30’s, reassured us that the Westerton Sleeper train did exist and that he
has previously taken it, although he was unable to explain why the station
board said “Edinburgh Only”.
A couple of
minutes later, from the same direction in which the Helensburgh Central
training had just disappeared, we heard a low rumble: It was one of the ancient
ESW engines that all the Caledonian Sleeper trains use.A short train consisting of only 4 or 5 cars
arrived. (Somehow, they had managed not to run into each other…) As we started
to board one of the sleeper cars, a woman at the far end of the train leaned
out into the rain and called to us.We
trundled down to her, where she addressed us by name, telling the other man to
get on and go right, and me to get on and turn left.We left her to deal with the displaced
woman.
When she came by
a couple minutes later to check my tickets, she reassured me that this train
was in fact going to London Euston.I
got ready for bed and went to sleep.About 1am I got up to use the toilet; when I looked out, I discovered
that we were sitting in Edinburgh Waverly station, which was brightly lit but completely
and eerily empty.I don’t know how long
we waited there, because I went back to sleep.
After a somewhat
irregular night of sleep I woke up about 7am.We were noodling along through North London.Pretty soon we stopped, and waited for at
least an hour, while sleek yellow-and-red Virgin trains raced past us.I got dressed, shaved, ate a light breakfast,
and drank some tea.I reviewed my slides
for today, did my daily 20 min of writing (working on the references for my
almost-completed Personal Questionnaire Cross Analysis paper).Finally, the train started moving again.
We arrived at
Euston Station. The train had grown
prodigiously in the night, by agglomerating most of Scotland’s Sunday night
sleeper trains into the one Sleeper Train to Rule Them All. I set out for Shelter Training in the London
Forum on City Road.Since I’d been to
the training venue before, I’d forgotten to bring my London map, and I soon
became lost.I eventually jerry-rigged
an ex tempore sat nav using my phone and my iPad and got back on track,
arriving 10 min late and rather out of breath and sweaty… and had a lovely day
talking about qualitative change process research tools, case study research,
counseling research pedagogy and other matters arising to a little group of
counseling trainers and doctoral students. The Westerton Connection had
succeeded, although if it’s all the same I think on the way back I’ll just get
off at Hyndland.
An excerpt from Training the Trainers: A Research Training Manual, McLeod, Elliott & Wheeler, in press.
Commentary: I spent the end of November and the beginning of December working on revisions to the research training manual that John McLeod, Sue Wheeler and I have been working on for the past 2 years.John added a section on understanding common statistical concepts to the latest version, which I thought was a good idea, but as usual, we are struggling with how to explain in ordinary language what a standard deviation is. If I remember correctly, it was my attempt to explain this concept that lead one of our diploma students to make a t-shirt that read, “The last thing I understood was the baked potato I ate for lunch.”The following builds on John’s version and is my most recent attempt to get the idea across:
It is also important to know about the variability of scores - the amount of spread in the distribution of scores. The standard deviation statistic (abbreviated as s, s.d., sd or SD) is usually given in research reports as a measure of variability. In fact, the SD figure is the average variability of scores. That’s where the term “standard deviation” comes from: It is a kind of average or typical (hence “standard”) difference (hence “deviation”) between each person’s score and the mean score.It tells us how far off the average person is from the average, which also tells us how far we should trust the average as a way of representing the people in the sample:The bigger the SD, the farther people tend to be from average.Interesting facts about SDs:
• About two-thirds of people in a sample will have scores that are within one SD above or below the mean.
• About 95% of people will have scores that are within 2 SDs above or below the mean.
• On a standard 5-point rating scale, such as that used by the CORE Outcome Measure, many items will have SDs of about 1 scale point, so it’s a good idea to pay attention to items with SDs substantially above (1.5) or below (.5) that.
Further reflections. "Standard deviation" is another one of these oxymorons that we never think about: The idea of a standard/typical exception/deviation from the general case clashes internally; if we listen to it careful, we can hear its Bartokian dissonance as another kind of harmony.We tend simultaneously toward the general, the central tendency and to our own individuality and uniqueness.The Standard Deviation recognizes this and its own peculiarly quantitative way honours this individuality.
I generated this list of 25 research projects as a way of telling our MSc Counselling and DPsych Counselling Psychology students about the wonderful data archive that we have developed in the Research Clinic over the past 2 years. However, it illustrates more broadly the kinds of research that is possible with research clinics such as ours, and also the wide range of different kinds of psychotherapy research that is being done today. I'm posting it here because I think it's of more general interest beyond our students at Strathclyde.
The List of Projects:
The following is a list of research topics and studies that are possible with the archive of data in the research clinic.It makes use of most of the data being collected but is not exhaustive.Topics marked by an asterisk are high priority topics, needed for current and planned core aspects of the research program.Each topic is first defined, then some of the main variations are described, laying out multiple different studies that can be carried out to address the topic.The full version of this list is in a table format, with additional descriptive information about each topic.I estimate that there are at least a 100 studies described here, providing a detailed agenda for making use of the Research Clinic data archive. Topics are organized by their main emphasis.
(*Indicates high priority for the research team.)
A. Outcome
1. Quantitative Outcome in Practice-based research protocol.
(c) Dose-effect relationships on PQ: plot amount of client change or % reliable change by number of sessions; at termination & along the way
(d) Signal-alarm analyses: What is the rate of red & yellow signals? Does red predict worse outcome? (also: SA protocol)
*2. Interpretive case studies of PCE therapy outcome & change processes: Hermeneutic Single Case Efficacy Design (HSCED). Masters level: one case; doctoral level: 3 cases.
Case selection possibilities: (a) particular client presenting problems (e.g., generalized anxiety, PTSD); (b) different kinds of Social Anxiety (e.g., specific vs. generalized/avoidant; (c) poor outcome cases; (d) nondirective PCT; (e) with different kinds of accompanying problems (e.g., SA with obsessive-compulsive processes, borderline/fragile process)
3. Post-therapy client qualitative change (cf. Klein & Elliott, 2006)
(1) Time period:
(a) At mid-therapy.
(b) At end of therapy.
(c) In the post-therapy period (at follow-up).
(2) Analysis method:
(a) Qualitative analysis of changes described by clients.
(b) Content analysis of changes described by clients.
(3) In addition, can compare clients with:
(a) good vs. poor outcomes.
(b) different presenting problems (e.g., SA, depression, PTSD).
(c) Student vs. tutor therapists.
4. Sensitivity to change: On which items do clients in PCE therapy show the most/earliest change?
Item analyses on CORE-OM, PQ at pre, post-10 and end of therapy
5. Healthcare utilization effects of PCE therapy. Work with health economists.
(a) Use instrument to calculate illness burden in clients at pre- and post-therapy.
(b) Use changes across therapy to calculate increases or decreases in healthcare costs
B. Process
*6. Observer Process Measures of Adherence/competence of PCT/EFT: (a) Interrater reliability; (b) consistency/differences across sampled sessions (early – mid – late); (c) convergent validity: agreement with therapist adherence self-ratings; (d) construct validity: agreement with client ratings on TRS
(e) Does adherence/competence predict outcome? (f) Do raters & therapists agree on session ratings?
Separate studies on:
(a) Therapeutic Relationship Scale - Observer (revised short form).
(b) Working Alliance Inventory –12 - Observer (Anderson)
7.Sequential process analysis of the relation between client level of self-explication and therapist processing proposals.Replication of Sachse, with separate samples of PCT and EFT.
Ratings of C explication and T processing proposals in sampled sequences from early, middle & late sessions.
(1) Assess inter-rater reliability; compare C => T and T => C influence.
(2) Different therapies: (a) PCT. (b) EFT
(3) Compare: (a) PCT vs. EFT; (b) point in therapy; (c) SA vs. Depressed clients; (d) Best vs Worse outcome clients
8. Client modes of engagement in PCT & EFT. Micro-processes engaged in by clients in sessions (e.g., externalized, experiential search, self-reflection. Comparison between PCT & EFT.
(1) Descriptive and psychometric analyses of therapist post-session ratings.
Discourse analysis of first sessions after which client declined to continue with therapy; look for and categorize “signs of trouble”
10. Emotion Scheme Elaboration of Narrative process coding system (NPCS). (1) Locate emotion episodes in sessions (e.g., social anxiety). (2) Instead of Angus’ 3-category NPCS codes, add two more to provide complete coverage of all 5 aspects of the emotion scheme model: External (=situational-perceptual); Bodily-expression (=Internal); Experienced emotion (=Internal); Reflexive (=symbolic-conceptual); Action tendency (=no exact equivalent in NPCS).
(1) Use Emotion Narrative Scheme codes to code PCE sessions:
(a) Inter-rater reliability and consistency across sessions; frequency of emotion narrative codes.
(b) Change in Emotion Narrative Scheme codes across therapy
(2) Use scheme qualitatively to describe a client’s emotion schemes across therapy, sampling 1-2 sessions each from early, middle and late in therapy.
(a) Case studies tracking emotion schemes for particular clients.
(b) Study SA Emotion Narrative schemes across SA clients early in therapy to develop general schematic description of SA.
(3) Apply to different types of clients in PCT & EFT
D. Pre-therapy Client Factors (predictors or process or outcome)
13. Taxonomy of client presenting problems and their relation to outcome
(1) Different approaches to defining types of clients:
(a) Use PQ items to identify different kinds of presenting problems.
(b) Use CORE-OM & SI items for cluster analysis across clients.
(2) Different criterion variables:
(a) Post-therapy outcome.
(b) Immediate session effects.
14. Interpersonal style and clients’ experiences of therapy. Use pre-therapy Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP) to identify clients with different interpersonal styles (controlling, distant, unassertive).
Compare SA clients with different interpersonal styles on:
(a) Pre-post change.
(b) Quality of therapeutic relationship/alliance.
Use qualitative analysis to study experiences of clients with particular interpersonal styles on:
(c) Helpful factors.
(d) Significant event descriptions
E. Client Experiences
*15. Client retrospective perceptions of helpful aspects of therapy
Separate studies:
(a) Mid-therapy.
(b) End of therapy.
(c) During follow-up period.
Grounded Theory analysis
16. Client perceptions of hindering processes
Because of low baserates, use both retrospective interview and post-session data
17. Extra-therapy factors that affect therapy (after T. Mackrill)
Separate studies on:
(a) Resources (personal, situational).
(b) Obstacles (personal, situational).
18. How do clients experience of nondirective (ND) PCT therapy? Select clients with in highly nondirective therapies (use reputation or TRS ratings); rate sessions for nondirectiveness to confirm.
(a) Analyze client discourse about nondirectiveness (CI, session recordings).
(b) Analyze HAT descriptions (event type or ND-relevant discourse).
(c) Helpful factors (CI).
(d) Compare ND PCT vs. general PCT vs. EFT on client, therapist relationship ratings.
19. Relational processes in client descriptions of significant events in PCT (cf. Schnellbacher)
Interpretive discourse analysis of image of self-other in significant event descriptions
20. Emotion processes in client descriptions of significant events in EFT (cf. Elliott, 2007)
Interpretive discourse analysis of emotion talk in significant event descriptions
F. Significant Events
21. Types of significantly helpful events
Possibilities for sample/design: (a) in EFT; (b) in PCT; (c) EFT vs. PCT; (d) in clients with specific presenting problem (e.g., depression, SA)
Analysis possibilities: (a) Open coding; (b) content analysis
22. Relational depth events: Use Relational Depth Inventory (RDI; Wiggins) to identify sessions with RD events
(a) Use RDI description & session recordings to describe general characteristics of these events (where in therapy, session, who did what).
(b) Comprehensive Process Analysis of one (masters level) or three (doctoral level) events
G. Measure Development
23. Validation and revision of Strathclyde Inventory with a clinical population (Beth Freire)
Five years ago, I was having a really hard time at my previous job, and as a way of getting some space from departmental politics, was offered the opportunity to work for 8 weeks a year for two years as a guest professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL), in Belgium.My old friend Germain Lietaer was retiring and they needed someone to teach a course on psychotherapy, help supervise a couple of their PhD students, and help strengthen the research component of their parttime Person-Centred-Experiential (PCE) therapy postgraduate course.We arranged that I would come 4 times a year for two weeks at a time, and that I would teach the course partly as a distance learning course.There then followed a rather crazy schedule in which on top of my teaching at the University of Toledo, I kept sloping off to Belgium where I had this other life.
Among other things, I started studying Dutch.For one of the visits, Diane and Kenneth came along, and we all did a privately-tutored two-week intensive course in Dutch, during which we would have long arguments about grammar and syntax and theories of language learning.I guess you could think of it as a peculiar form of Extreme Family Vacation.
One of things I worked on over those two years was the development of a protocol for an empirical single case study requirement in the PCE therapy course.Nele Stinckens was (and is) the director of the course and we began working together on this project.Nele is very organized, bright Flemish psychologist with a puckish sense of humor and a strong sense of herself.She asked one of her clients to be a demonstration case study and provided a professional example of what we were asking the students to do.I did a presentation on one of my case studies (the client with the bridge phobia; the write-up has also just been published).We worked with the students to help keep them moving and to help them deal with their stuck places, of which there were many.We presented our ongoing work at several conferences, and eventually wrote it up.This is the article that emerged out of that collaboration and my two years at KUL. It is a real pleasure to see it appear in print.
Abstract: The goal of the Leuven systematic case-study research protocol project is to stimulate practice-oriented research in order to bridge the gap between research and practice. In this article we give a progress report of the project, in which a set of Dutch-language research instruments was created and tested with postgraduate trainees in Person-Centred/Experiential therapy at the University in Leuven (Belgium).We begin by presenting the general framework for the protocol, including the three major domains of therapy process, therapy outcome and client/therapist characteristics.Then, we give an overview of the quantitative and qualitative instruments used. We explain how the project has been implemented in the postgraduate programme. To evaluate the success of the project, we analyzed the answers of our trainees on a questionnaire. We give an overview of the clinical cases involved and the variety of research questions that have been formulated in the individual case-studies. Finally we discuss the value of this pilot project.
Reference: Stinckens, N., Elliott, R., & Leijssen, M. (2009). Bridging the Gap Between Therapy Research and Practice in a Person-Centered/Experiential Therapy Training Program:The Leuven Systematic Case-study Research Protocol. Person-Centred and Experiential Psychotherapies, 8, 143-162.
I’m on my way home from my two-day stint at the Second Training the Trainers Research Summer School at the University of Leicester. Last year’s summer school was so successful that we decided to repeat it, following roughly the same plan as last year: Two days on practice-based and case study research with Sue Wheeler and me, followed by another two days on using the research literature and doing qualitative research with John McLeod and Sue, and winding up with Sue and Kaye Richards talking about research supervision on Friday. This year, however, we also had our new draft trainer’s manual to test out.
Once again, the summer school attracted a diverse but passionate group of counselling trainers. Many were in various stages of rethinking their courses in anticipation of approaching changes in the form of the new BACP accreditation standards and the regulation of counselling and psychotherapy. Other were looking for support for their own MSc and PhD research projects, or simply trying to make their research inputs more effective.
After introductions and a helpful update from Sue, I launched into a shorter version on my professorial lecture from last month. The graphics in this talk make it quite appealing, I think. This was followed by the Outcome Monitoring input. After lunch we had the participants break into small groups to try out one of the exercises in the Trainer’s Manual. All of this appeared to go well indeed, and we had several very stimulating discussions along the way, contributed to by the diversity of theoretical orientations, types of training course, and backgrounds of the trainers present.
Today was Case Study Day, but to get there I first had to introduce qualitative change process measures, i.e., the Helpful Aspects of Therapy (HAT) Form and the Change Interview. The systematic case study presentation overwhelmed last year’s group, and I’d done a lot of work afterwards simplifying and clarifying the input so that it would be appropriate for diploma-level input. I discovered that it is still not simple and user-friendly enough, but it is definitely getting there: the presentation went much better than last year, and I was able to figure out how to make it even clearer. All this led to some very interesting discussions about what would be possible at the diploma level. Then, Sue, seeing that some of the participants were flagging, had them break up into small groups to discuss how to implement a student case study requirement. I love it when Sue does that.
So, once again the Training the Trainers Research Summer School was off to a good start. I was torn, as I left them: sorry to miss the energy they brought, but really looking forward to getting home and my upcoming vacation.
This time, on the first day, I made a point of talking about the fact that our site, Vaughan College, is built overlooking the ruins of the social nexus of the ancient Roman city of Ratae Corieltauvorum, today known as Leicester (=the fort on the river Ligore): the baths. These are overlooked by the Jewry Wall (the name is too difficult to explain but has nothing to do with Judaism), which originally separated the baths form the gymnasium next door. As a result, many of the participants made a point of exploring the ruins during breaks. This year, the juxtaposition of ancient Roman ruins and forward-looking practice-based research methods created a satisfying complement. After all, the Roman baths were quite high-tech for their time, and I think the ancient Romans would have appreciated our interest in quantitative and qualitative ways of knowing as well as case study methods. The Romans were nothing if not organized, while at the same time inheriting the Greek tradition of humanism. If summer schools could be dedicated to someone, I’d dedicate my two days to the ancient Roman-Briton city today known as Leicester.
When the current Dean of Strathclyde’s Faculty of Education arrived 2.5 years ago, she proposed a series of professional lectures. Mine took place this past Thursday, during the Parttime course’s final intensive week, and served as my inaugural lecture. I debated for months about what to pick for my topic, until I heard Tom Bryce’s lecture in March, on science education. I said to myself, “That’s interesting – I’m doing science education, too. Why don’t I piggy back on Tom’s presentation, and talk about the research methods curriculum development work I’ve been doing over the past three years.”
Because it was a mixed audience, and my topic – not just research methods, but teaching research methods – was potentially quite dry, I spent a lot of time dressing it up with graphics and jokes. I worked pretty hard on it. In the end, the Powerpoint slides amount to 16 MB, too big to email or upload onto our research community’s Google Group site. (Too many high rez photos...)
I was delighted that representatives showed up from all four of the courses that I teach research methods to: PGDip Counselling, MSc, Counselling Psychology, and PhDs. There was also a scattering of colleagues, and the Dean, the Vice-Dean for Research, and some lecturers/professors from elsewhere in the Faculty. Diane and Lorna both reported that the last group were taking notes; afterwards, they said they were pleased and envisaged further discussions of the issues I’d raised.
I’d been quite anxious about the presentation, because of the unknown, mixed nature of the audience, so I felt much lighter afterwards. I’d developed a new, more entertaining style of Powerpoint presentation, and said some provocative and rather challenging things, which appeared to have been well-received. John McLeod came down from Dundee especially for the occasion, and did an inspired job of introducing me and saying how wonderful I was. While this sort of this is always good for the ego, mostly I felt touched by his going to the effort and how carefully he tried to support me. Finally, I felt inspired by how many of my students showed up, and they also felt inspired to be recognized and to see the overall framework into which their respective inputs fit, along with the philosophy behind it.
I’m approaching the end of my 3rd year at the University of Strathclyde, which means that several of the MSc students who started with me in my first and second years are now trying to finish up. Since the beginning of May I’ve been auditing the qualitative analyses of four of these students. It seems that they are all converging at the same time, so I’ve spent many hours wading through draft analyses, which vary in length from 30 to 90 pages of meaning units and categories. Actually, this crop is looking pretty good, although I think all of them have discovered that there was much more to qualitative analysis than they had previously imagined. The auditing document is really the core of a qualitative research project, the goal to which many months’ of analysis and the basis for writing up a qualitative dissertation.
It’s a lot of work to go through them with a fine tooth comb, but it’s worth it for the quality control and the training aspect; the only way to teaching qualitative analysis is to closely supervise a student through the actual process. As I write, these students are busy revising their analyses and writing up their studies. I wish them well!
Last weekend we went to the latest conference of the UK Chapter of SPR, the Society for Psychotherapy Research. SPR-UK has been struggling a bit to maintain itself over the past few years, and last year the annual conference had to be cancelled because of lack of interest. This year was difficult also, with many people hesitating or withdrawing because their employers were no longer willing pay their way; however, we did manage to put together a small meeting with about 20 participants, about the size of some of the Ohio SPR meetings (put together in the early 00's by Bill Stiles, Tim Anderson, me and our students). Nevertheless, the level of presentations and discussion was quite good, the scenery stunning, and the food excellent.
Having talked myself into doing 4 presentations, the pace of work was unrelenting. I started off with a presentation of Beth and my PCE meta-analysis, now well-honed. A bit more difficult was the workshop on research training that Sue Wheeler and I were set to do, but which I ended up doing on my own when Sue couldn’t make it in time due to a prior commitment. Fortunately, Sue sent a very helpful set of notes, which I followed. Particularly useful were the following questions, which the three participants explored: -What has been your best research training experience? What made it the best? -What has been your most unhelpful training experience? These questions (which are really Change Interview questions applied to research training) produced some very useful comments, emphasizing the relational aspects of research training and the value of learning in collaborative research teams.
In fact, the experience left me thinking that it would be really interesting and useful to do a larger study on the topic of helpful and unhelpful factors in psychotherapy/counselling research training. If I could just find the time… maybe this could be a component of the next phase of the Researcher Development Initiative project that I'm involved with (see Blog entry: http://pe-eft.blogspot.com/2009/01/rdi-training-trainers-project.html).
After the first day of the two-day conference, I stayed up late trying to put together my presentations for day 2. I fell asleep halfway through the first of these, a paper outlining the experiential approach to research training; however, I was able to finish it the next morning in time for the presentation.
I managed to throw together enough bits and pieces to be able to give the final paper, a preliminary report on our Rasch analyses of the SCL90R, utilizing data from the Aberdeen group, but it was not one of my better presentations, and I was relieved when it was done.
The UK SPR group appears to be resolved to make another try at organizing a larger conference, and even to meet again at Ravenscar, isolated though it is. This was Thomas Schröder’s first local area chapter conference as president and I enjoyed his enthusiasm and positive energy. We don’t know exactly how things will unfold; the UK chapter has gotten pretty small, work demands have increased, making running a small scientific organization increasingly a leisure-time activity; also, money for conferences has become increasingly scarce. The openness, flexibility, colleagiality, and even the level of the presentations all indicate that there is a place for SPR in the UK counselling/psychotherapy research scene, even alongside the obvious success of the BACP annual research conference. The latter is much better funded and organized, but feels a bit too regimented, lacks flexibility in type of presentation, and ends up feeling not as open or inclusive. I keep thinking that the ideal would be something that incorporated the best qualities of both conferences. In the meantime, there appears to be new blood and new energy in the UK Chapter of SPR, and the BACP research conference is still evolving, so there is hope that we will end up with two premier events for promoting and encouraging the development of research on psychotherapy and counselling in the UK.
Faced with multiple threats and a complex political situation, counselling in the UK needs to pull itself up by its bootstraps in very short order and become increasingly research active. To do this, it must produce and publish meaningful, politically useful research in several genres on key topics such as outcome studies with particular client groups (to provide political support) and research on change processes (to improve our therapies). However, this requires more active counselling researchers with the appropriate skills, which in turn requires more and better research training, which in turn requires more people able to teach counselling research, which in turn….As I said, it’s a bootstrapping operation.
That’s where the Researcher Development Initiative (RDI) Training the Trainers project comes in. Supported by an ESRC grant that Sue Wheeler and Nancy Rowlands managed, by dogged persistence, to obtain, Sue, Nancy, John McLeod, Kaye Richards, Julia Meeks (our intrepid evaluator) and I (with support from a couple of other outside experts, like Steve Trevelyan, from Social Work) have been meeting over the past 18 months to develop and deliver a set of training events and resources. The last two of the one-day workshops are happening this month, in London and Manchester, and the evaluation data are beginning to roll in.
For this reason, I got up yesterday at 4am to catch the train to York, for a follow-up meeting on the project, to review our progress and to think about where to go with it next. We noted that the project got off to a slow start, and that we’d had to cancel a couple of the one-day workshops because of low numbers; however, the 5-day Summer School was a rousing success and we’ve already had more than 40 expressions of interest in our doing it again next summer, with the same cast and format, thus time supported entirely by BACP (who co-sponsored the current project).
Our main worry at this point is how to help John and I deliver the major remaining piece of the project by the end of March: a training manual consisting of a longish overview text and a set of exercises and resources for trainers to use with their students. After some discussion, we determined that the solution is going to be for Sue to come up to Scotland to stand over us until we produce the goods. Hmm… to borrow an expression from my kids, “Robert senses a trap….”
Then we were on to thinking about the future. What can we do to increase our capital of productive research leaders, especially given that most of us are within 10 years of retirement? The Training the Trainers work obviously needs to continue, but as originally conceived it was pitched mostly at improving the research education of diploma level counselling students and, to a lesser extent, masters students. However, it became very clear to us at the Summer School that there a huge need to support counselling trainers not only in teaching research methods to their students, but also in helping the trainers themselves to upgrade their research skills via their own MSc and PhD studies or first counselling research projects.
In other words, we also need something aimed at a higher level: producing PhD level researchers well-trained in a range of qualitative and quantitative methods and focused on topics of strategic importance for the counselling field. So what will do this? A mentoring and networking program for identifying and nuturing promising junior researchers? A program to support lecturer-level counselling faculty in pursuing PhD studies? Something like the Norwegian Double Competency program I lectured to 4 years ago near Bergen? (This is a nationwide program of advanced studies for postgraduate clinical psychologists, offering a combination of advanced professional and research training via networks and regular joint conferences.) A series of conferences to set and highlight national priorities for counselling research? Probably all of these…
Early in the day, a phrase came to me: The Research Journey. Somehow, we need in various ways to encourage and support people in joining and travelling on The Research Journey. The Research Journey starts with curiosity, inspiration, imagination, and more than a bit of chutzpah: Wondering about what we can learn by studying counselling carefully, being inspired, having the nerve and being able to imagine ourselves actually contributing knowledge. It continues, odyssey-like, through delays, doubts, and frustrations; broken dreams, disappointments, and surprises; left-turns, break-throughs and ah-hah moments. One thing leads to another, as The Research Journey continues: interests evolve and transmute, as we age, perhaps growing wiser in the process.
Over course of the day, The Research Journey came to seem figural to me: How do we help people undertake, survive and even thrive on this Journey? To Sue, Nancy, and Kaye, one answer seemed obvious: Through the telling of Research Journey Tales, that is, by asking various of us tell our stories. If you'll excuse the Terry Pratchett Latin: In narritas, veritas!
Here is another little methods piece I did for the University’s research methods website, which I think is of more general interest.
Sensitizing categories, as proposed by Glaser & Strauss (1967), are concepts brought by researchers to aid qualitative analyses, but which do not unduly affect the results the emerge from the data. In addition to being potentially useful tools, the concept of whether or not to consciously employ sensitizing categories in one’s research raises important general issues for qualitative researchers to consider.
1. Before starting a qualitative study, should I avoid reading the literature, in order to keep an open mind?
In 1980’s, at the beginning of the qualitative revolution in social science research, many researchers were convinced that the only way to escape the narrowness of previous quantitative social science research was to avoid reading about your topic until after collecting and analyzing your data. In this way, by keeping your mind in a pristine condition, you would be able to maintain an unbiased view of the data. You wouldn’t have to “bracket” your assumptions (a favourite metaphor of phenomenologists), because you wouldn’t have any assumptions.
This view is attributed to Glaser and Strauss (1967), founders of the Grounded Theory approach to qualitative research, and Glaser (1978; as opposed to Strauss, 1998) does in fact advocate avoiding doing pre-research literature reviews. This has a certain appeal, and also justifies jumping right into one’s research without lengthy, boring sitting around in libraries reading books and articles. You could go directly, “back to the things themselves” (to quote the famous dictum of the phenomenologist Husserl, 1913/1982).
Questions for reflection: •Why is this no longer the dominant view of qualitative researchers? •Whose interests might be served by a return to a more traditional view of “literature review first”? •Under what conditions might “literature-free” research be justified? •How can qualitative research retain its openness and freedom, while still grounding itself in the relevant scientific literature?
The inevitability of “bias”
Whether the belief in assumption-free qualitative research can be best understand as misplaced optimism about the openness of the human mind, as an expression of laziness, or as dangerous naiveté leading to unconscious, unchecked bias, it is not the dominant view of qualitative researchers today. In fact, it’s not clear that this “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind” was ever really subscribed by more than a few qualitative zealots. For example, an important early text (Bogdan & Taylor, 1975) urges readers preparing to do qualitative observational studies to read the literature in preparation for entering the field, so as to avoid committing faux pas with informants. Clearly, it is necessary to know something about what you are studying before starting to collect data; the question is, what and how much? There is also the question of how to use what one does know.
Philosophers since Kant have generally understood that it is impossible to know anything without bringing some prior knowledge, or forestructure, along. Not only is it impossible not to drag one’s prior knowledge along, but this prior knowledge is what makes the knowing possible. Without prior assumptions, categories, and words, we would be faced with what the American psychologist-philosopher William James (1890) referred to as a “buzzing, blooming confusion”, in other words, chaos. We wouldn’t even know there was something there to be known; everything would sound like noise, that is, meaningless, random stuff. For example, even something as seemingly straightforwardly obvious as an impression of the colour red is only made possible by the fact that our sensory system is biologically tuned to certain light frequencies and culturally programmed to divide the light spectrum into certain major categories. Awareness of these prior knowledge structures has led to whole fields of study into the nature and content of the human knowledge system, including perceptual and cognitive psychology, depth psychology (psychoanalytic and Jungian), cultural anthropology, and ethnomethology (Garfinkel, 1967), among others.
Even worse, failure to acknowledge the role, influence, or aid of prior knowledge means that we cannot therefore know the extent to which we are being limited or influenced by that knowledge, thus blinding us to our biases, whether these are biological, psychological or cultural in origin.
Exercise: Take a blank piece of printer paper. Fold it half the short way, top to bottom. Run your finger along the fold, looking carefully at how the paper has taken the fold. Now unfold the paper, and fold it the long way, right to left. Once again, take a close look at the fold, at how bumpy or not the fold is. Note that that one of the two folds you made is much more smooth while the other is more bumpy. The bumpy fold was done against or across what is referred to as the bias or grain of the paper, while the smooth fold was done with the bias or grain.
Finally, find a good dictionary and look up the meaning and origin of the word “bias”. Why is there bias in paper? What other things have bias? Is it possible or even desirable to make “unbiased” paper? What implications does this parable have for research in general, and qualitative research in particular? What does this have to do with the concept of “sensitizing categories”?
Using Sensitizing Categories
In retrospect, Glaser’s (1978) argument against pre-research literature reviews appears to have been misunderstood. First, he doesn’t say you should read nothing. Rather, his view is that the researcher should read books on qualitative method, especially his books, to help you develop an open, creative approach to your data. He also says you shouldn’t record your interviews or talk to anybody about your emerging theory (Wikipedia, 2008); fortunately, nobody today listens to those methodological guidelines either! Second, the reason Glaser says it’s a bad idea to read the research literature before doing your research is that it will desensitize you, that is, make it more difficult for you to hear what your data are trying to tell you. He doesn’t want you to read right past your data, saying to yourself, “Oh, of course that’s an example of X”, rather than stopping to really listen to what a participant is trying to tell you. So the real point is that anything that interferes with hearing your data with a fresh, curious ear is bad and should be minimized.
But Glaser (1978) also argues in favour of “theoretical sensitivity”, the use of sensitizing concepts that help you hear what is going on in your data. How is this possible?
Glaser (1978) and Strauss (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) famously disagreed on how to do this. While Glaser favours a more open-ended, creative, unstructured use of prior concepts, Strauss and Corbin put forward a “paradigm” of organizing categories, which is the basis of what they refer to as “axial coding” (i.e., organizing your data within a set of broad headings or domains). Exactly what this means is subject to varying interpretation. On the one hand, it can be understood as a general social theory that can be applied to a wide range of social phenomena, as Strauss & Corbin appear to imply. On the other hand, others (e.g., Elliott & Timulak, 2005) argue that the axial coding or domain structure of a topic emerges over the course of analyzing the first 3 to 5 interview protocols, and reflecting the interaction between the researcher’s interests and what participants are interested in telling about the topic. For example, it is appears to be common for informants to want to say much more about the background or context of the phenomenon than the researcher is interested in studying(e.g., Rhodes et al., 1994).
Sensitizing categories as research topic domains. In this latter view, then, the most useful sensitizing categories are broad headings that remind the researcher to listen for particular aspects of experiences, without constraining the specific nature of those aspects. For example, it is generally useful to organize one’s topic into a set of domains or subtopics such as:
• Context: What led up the targeted experience (e.g., realizing one’s ordinary way of seeing something was wrong; struggling and feeling confused; considering different possibilities; etc) • Experience: What happened during the targeted experience (e.g., understanding a scientific concept such as gravity) • Effects: What happened afterward, or flowed out of the targeted experience (e.g., feeling clarity and relief; applying the concept to other situations)
While such a framework of sensitizing categories or research domains seems obvious and straightforward, it often turns out need further adaptation. For example, participants may have little to say about the effects of an experience, but may make an important distinction between the immediate context or situation in which the experience occurs and its deeper context or background earlier in person’s studies or life. Thus, it seems important for the researcher to hold these sensitizing categories lightly and to be ready to adapt them to fit the particular research topic and data.
At the same time, even a primitive set of sensitizing domains will alert the researcher to listen for a broad range of aspects relevant to their topic. It will tell them where to look, but not what they should see there. Sensitizing categories organize the phenomenon being studied, without constraining it. Organizing the data into domains reduces the complexity of the analysis into more workable subsets of data that can be handled one at a time. This means that the researcher is less likely to be overwhelmed by the “buzzing, blooming confusion” of their data.
Exercise: Spend half an hour thinking about a research topic you are interested in. What specifically do you want to know about it? What are its aspects or phases? Is it something that happens in a single moment, or does it unfold gradually over time? Does it have a beginning, middle and an end? See if you can produce an initial set of headings to organize your topic. Try to write one or two interview questions for each heading.
References
Bogdan, R., & Taylor, S.J. (1975). Introduction to qualitative research methods. New York: Wiley.
Elliott, R. & Timulak, L. (2005). Descriptive and interpretive approaches to qualitative research. In J. Miles & P. Gilbert (eds.), A Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical and Health Psychology (147-159). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Glaser, B. G. (1978). Theoretical sensitivity. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press.
Glaser, B. G. & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine.
Husserl, E. (1913/1982). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy: General introduction to a pure phenomenology (trans. F. Kersten). Boston: Kluwer.
James, W. (1890/1981). Principles of psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
Rhodes, R.H., Hill, C.E., Thompson, B.J., & Elliott, R. (1994). Client retrospective recall of resolved and unresolved misunderstanding events. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 41, 473-483.
Wikipedia. Grounded theory (Glaser). Retrieved on 12 Nov 2008 at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grounded_theory_(Glaser)
Months ago I agreed to cover the Belfast one-day workshop in our ESRC-funded grant project on developing research training capacity in counselling trainers. This was originally intended as a feeder for our five-day summer school program, but the Belfast workshop got scheduled after the summer school, so now it’s a feeder for a possible 2009 summer school.
Rather than attempt the whole thing in one day, I flew in last night, election day in the US. Diane and I had voted weeks ago by absentee ballot, so it was all over but the waiting for us. It was an eerie feeling, flying into a foreign city on election night, temporarily homeless. At some point, I remembered sitting in the Lodi Public Library on election night in 1960, waiting for my dad to finish up at the office and pick me up to take me home, filled with a sense of lonely dislocation, as large historical forces ground themselves into a new alignment, marking the beginning of a new era. Last night, this impression was rendered stronger by the fact that I am in the midst of a very bad cold, hacking, coughing and congested.
I had dinner with Jean McMinn, a faculty member on the counselling course at Queens University in Belfast; she had asked for the opportunity to pick my brain about what might be entailed in their setting up a new research clinic in the School of Education. I was happy to do this, and in spite of feeling unwell, it was a most interesting evening, as she spoke of the legacy of The Troubles, the long civil war in Northern Ireland, that is still too toxic to discuss openly when counsellor and client are unsure of each other’s position before the ceasefire 13 years ago (“How would my therapist feel if she knew that I was an IRA supporter?”).
My cough made it difficult to sleep, and the unfolding drama of the election returns proved to be too big a temptation for me to resist; I got up and checked the news at 1:30am GMT (8:30pm in Ohio) and again at 3:30am, watching the fascination of British television with this historic election. I was watching at 4am, as the polls closed on the west coast, they called the election for Obama, and at 4:30 when McCain gracefully and movingly conceded the election. I felt deeply moved, to tears, as I watched the crowds in Chicago and New York City, gathered mark the occasion and to celebrate. One of the many factors in our move to Scotland was our embarrassment at being associated with a country with such an inept, narrow-minded administration, which we saw as moving us all rapidly toward becoming a police state, and which was elected to office by the American people, including our neighbors in Toledo, not just once but twice. As I watched, I felt the beginning of a deep tectonic reversal, and even felt a bit of hope and pride that just maybe we had finally gotten something right.
This morning I got up, somewhat worse for the wear, and met Kaye Richards in the lobby for the walk over to the Queens University School of Education. We had 14 attendees, a varied lot including local counselling course faculty, some folks up from Trinity College Dublin (Laco’s haunt), a couple of nervous CBT therapists fearing ostracism, and several others. On reviewing their hopes and fears (a standard ritual in counselling training events in the UK), it quickly became obvious that we were never going approach being able to meet the needs this diverse but fascinating group.
We resigned ourselves to being as entertaining as possible: Kaye balanced on her high heels while she outlined the context of the RDI project and BACP’s proposed Core Curriculum; I turned John McLeod’s potted tour of the history of psychotherapy research into breathless race through the main research findings from thousands of research studies, alternating passion and cynicism, while shamelessly plugging Mick’s new book; we dropped the canned voice-over powerpoint presentation on evaluation research in favour of an extended version of my outcome monitoring/stealth quantitative input; we allayed the CBT therapists' fears by providing them the opportunity to be heard and respected; and we ended up helping the group think about setting up their own Northern Ireland Counselling Research Google Group. In between, there was the now-familiar ritual of attendees coming up to us to ask us about their research ideas. Before leaving, I met for a bit with Jean and her head of school, Tony, to discuss ideas about the possible Queens University research clinic.
On the hour-long way back to the airport (I’d made the mistake of flying into Belfast International Airport rather than Belfast City Airport), I had a long talk with the taxi driver, a Belfast native, about the election and what it might mean for the US and the rest of the world. It’s not clear to me from this distance whether Americans are really aware of the extent to which the rest of the world has been waiting with bated breath for this outcome, but it’s really true, and now it appears that there is widespread hope that things will be different and that the US will once again collaborate with other countries rather try to bully or go it alone. I’m almost afraid to hope, but what else is there?
As I walked back up the hill from the Hyndland train station tonight, I heard the distant pop-pop of fireworks, marking Bonfire Night (AKA Guy Fawkes Day), and it made me think in contrast of Northern Ireland, just emerging from The Troubles. No need there to celebrate an ancient attempt to incite civil war; the real thing is still too raw and close. America’s celebration of new hope seems more appropriate to me tonight.
This afternoon Brian proudly announced that research clinic had logged its 100th client: Since its first client contact last November, the Strathclyde Centre for Counselling & Psychotherapy has been contacted by 100 prospective clients.
Almost all of these clients have received telephone screenings; most have received intake screenings in one of our two research protocols; dozens have begun counselling; and a growing number have finished counselling. We now have a waiting list, which is a mixed blessing, but indicates the research clinic is clearly meeting a community need. We have logged several hundred sessions and sponsored three masters level dissertations by Counselling Psychology students (HSCED studies). As well as providing valuable training and practice opportunities for students and professional-level counsellors, as well as mental health services for folks from the Glasgow area, the research clinic is a research collective: That is, students and professionals contribute data as counsellors and researchers, and can then draw on the data set for their own research. As the the data archive builds, a wider variety of research projects becomes possible.
We are now interviewing the second cohort of students seeking placements in the research clinic. We are looking forward to seeing our 2nd hundred clients!
For more information, see the research clinic’s website: www.strath.ac.uk/Departments/counsunit/counselling/centre.html
Note. Some time ago I was asked to write a short piece on the Hermeneutic Circle for a research website at the University of Strathclyde. After putting it off for far too long, I decided I’d try it out as a blog entry. For the past 2 weeks, it has absorbed almost all my blogging energy, but I finally finished it this weekend.
Students in research methods courses often find the word “hermeneutic” and the associated concept of the Hermeneutic Circle to be intimidating pieces of technical philosophical/research jargon. For that reason, it is worth trying to unpack and demystify these concepts.
Hermeneutics
The word “hermeneutic” is really just a technical word for interpretation, but not necessarily interpretation in the psychoanalytic sense of interpreting unconscious phenomena. Instead, by focusing on how we make sense of complicated texts, hermeneutics brings our attention to one of the central issues in human existence: how it is possible for us to understand one another at all.
Although its etymology is obscure, it appears to be related to the Greek messenger god Hermes, who provides a handy metaphor for the act of interpretation, in that he was believed to deliver messages from the gods. In ancient times, important messages, as from one king to another, were delivered in the form of a scroll contained in a carrier tube, sealed with wax and stamped with the king’s signet ring. To receive the message, one would have to break the royal seal, remove the scroll from its concealing tube, and unroll it; all of these physical acts provide metaphors for the process of interpreting a difficult text or utterance.
Although typically traced to 18th century theologian/Bible scholars, the discipline of hermeneutics in fact goes back to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (350 BCE/2007), who wrote a book on the grammatical/logical hermeneutics, commonly referred to by its Latin title, De Interpretatione (“On Interpretation”, in English). Aristotle was of course interested in the interpretation of linguistic statements in general; however, during the medieval and renaissance periods, its main focus was on the interpretation of the Bible (Biblical Hermeneutics), in terms of its multiple levels of meaning. Hermeneutics as systematic discipline became formalized by Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) and Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) in the 18th and 19th centuries (Ramberg & Gjesdal, 2008).
For Bible scholars such as Friedrich Schleiermacher hermeneutics was the discipline of unpacking the meaning of ancient biblical sources, which are complicated, often damaged texts, dense with meaning of special significance to believers. Modern Bible scholars provide interesting examples of the hermeneutic method applied intensively to a single text over time: For example, Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) attempted to separate out the different layers of texts that had been written, revised and added to, over centuries.
Since Schleiermacher, modern hermeneutics has been developed successively by Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, and Ricoeur. Eventually, in the 1980’s, as part of the emergence of the qualitative research paradigm, this began to reach mainstream social sciences including psychology, sociology and education. Influential evaluation textbooks, such as early editions of Patton (2001) began to include sections on hermeneutic-interpretive research; Packer and Addison’s Entering the Circle (1989) marked the emergence of interest in hermeneutic methods in psychology. Today, the interpretive-hermeneutic approach is one of the main perspectives on qualitative research, alongside Grounded Theory (e.g., Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and empirical phenomenology (e.g., Wertz, 1983). In spite of superficial differences in intellectual tradition and terminology, the three overlap substantially with one another (McLeod, 2001). For example, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA: Smith & Osborn, 2003), as its name suggests, combines elements of hermeneutics and empirical phenomenology.
The Hermeneutic Circle: How is Understanding Possible?
Formulation of the hermeneutic circle goes back to Spinoza and is the central organizing concept in hermeneutics (Ramberg & Gjesdal, 2008), serving as key metaphor, narrative, paradox or puzzle: In encountering a text, especially a dense, complex text, our understanding of each part is based on our understanding of the whole, including its personal and cultural context; and yet we can only build up our understanding of the whole (and its context) by understanding the different parts of which the text is constructed. Initially, our understanding of the whole is made up entirely of a “forestructure” of the expectations or pre-understandings that we have brought to our encounter with the text we are trying to understand. Paradoxically, it is these that make understanding possible in the first place; and yet, clearly, these expectations or even prejudices are at the same time the major impediment to truly understanding the text. Furthermore, this paradox is fundamental not only to our understanding of texts, but also our coming to know any novel situation or even other human beings. The hermeneutic circle thus raises the question of how it is possible for human beings to understand one another.
The answer to this puzzle turns out to be repeated careful readings, which means that the hermeneutic circle is really more of spiral, as we circle deeper and deeper into understanding a text, qualitative interview protocol, or another human being. This is because each encounter or reading brings us into contact with new aspects of the text or person, deepening our understanding. Our reading moves tentatively at first in a kind of dialog, back and forth, gradually both deepening and opening up the text or person to us. Although this process is never really complete, it eventually reaches far enough to satisfy our immediate purposes, whether as researchers, or counsellors, or fellow human beings. (refs)
What does this have to do with Research?
Rennie (2000) has proposed that this process applies to all forms of qualitative analysis, even those that claim to be descriptive, and that therefore hermeneutics is the core philosophy of science for qualitative research. It can even be argued that the hermeneutic circle applies as well to the process of developing and refining measures in quantitative research. Thinking hermeneutically encourages us to be aware of the pre-understandings we bring to our research, to read our data carefully and deeply and to circle through it repeatedly in stages of familiarization, unitizing, category construction, linking up aspects of the analysis, and review/self-audit, and writing up. It cautions us to avoid the easy philosophical solutions of either realism or relativism, but instead to step carefully along what Rennie refers to the rocky middle road between the two.
To learn more about hermeneutics and the hermeneutic circle, see the references below.
References
Aristotle. (350 BCE/2007). On interpretation (Trans. E.A Edgehill). Accessed on 16 October 2008, at http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/interpretation/.
Elliott, R. (1989). Comprehensive Process Analysis: Understanding the change process in significant therapy events. In M. Packer & R.B. Addison (Eds.), Entering the circle: Hermeneutic investigation in psychology (pp. 165-184). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Elliott, R. (1993). Carrying out a Comprehensive Process Analysis. Unpublished paper. University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio USA. [available by request]
McLeod, J. (2001). Qualitative research in counselling and psychotherapy. London, UK: Sage.
Packer, M.J., & Addison, R.B. (Eds.). (1989). Entering the circle: Hermeneutic investigation in psychology. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Patton, M.Q. (2001). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (3nd ed.). London, UK: Sage.
Ramberg, B., & Gjesdal, K. (2008). Hermeneutics, in E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition). Accessed on 5 October 2008, at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/hermeneutics/ .
Rennie, D.L. (2000). Grounded theory methodology as methodical hermeneutics: Reconciling realism and relativism. Theory & Psychology, 10, 481-502.
Smith, J.A. and Osborn, M. (2003) Interpretative phenomenological analysis. In J.A. Smith (Ed.), Qualitative Psychology: A Practical Guide to Methods. London: Sage.
Wertz, F.J. (1983). From everyday to psychological description: Analyzing the moments of a qualitative data analysis. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 14, 197-241.
