Process Research In Counselling

Provide an overview of the most typical research methods / approaches used for studying counselling / psychotherapy.

Outcome research focuses on the results of counselling and had its primary focus is on the effectiveness of therapy.

‘…outcome research, which is research on the effect of therapy: whether it is helpful or unhelpful at alleviating the problems of the client’. (Reference page 282 in text book)
Process research focuses on the activity of what the counsellor and client do and is usually qualitative. Like outcome research, process research can also focus on what makes effective therapy.

‘The other main kind of research is process research, which focuses on the elements or ingredients of effective therapy: what the counsellor

This is because Quantitative research generally seeks to imitate natural sciences seeking to establish cause-effect relationships, therefore measurements and quantifications are required to determine the problems involved and the use of labs to exclude confounding variables.

However qualitative research can contain quantitative research, to ascertain the effectiveness of an approach compared to another. Quantitative research is usually detached from participants and seeks to simplify complex issues, This can be achieved through questionnaires that the client completes, which will measure levels of emotions that the client feels which the research article ‘An exploration of the therapeutic process while using computerised cognitive behavior therapy’ does. It can also be achieved through physiological measurements on the client’s heart rate or skin responses or statistical observations; where the client is observed using certain words or where the client can be observed using non-verbal behaviour. Quantitative research projects can begin with a qualitative pilot study in order to understand which questions are relevant in a questionnaire.

However unlike quantitative methods, qualitative approaches do not look for cause-effect relationships. Instead this approach examines meaning-making among people through language, how the client talks about their depression and through discourse analysis where the use of labels is explored with the client and how they are constructed in society. However due to the complexities of humans this approach to research can be unreliable and if rigorous ‘scientific’ criteria are applied then most qualitative studies would fail because of this. Weaknesses in this approach such as defining ‘family’ or ‘depression’ can leave the results of this approach undetermined in these areas as they are too complex to simplify. How someone describes ‘family and ‘depression’ to mean to them will mean something different to someone else, depending on their interpretation and based on their beliefs, culture and interpretations. Questionnaires can also be open to interpretation and not appear as reliable as they seem, ultimately leaving the causality difficult to determine, such as in the research paper ‘An exploration of the therapeutic process while using computerised cognitive behavior therapy’ where it states‘Participants completed a preliminary questionnaire to assess their suitability for the study’, (reference article). Therefore this could