Laura Cutts

Where does all the research go? Reflections on supporting trainee-applied psychologists to publish their research

This guest editorial reflects upon the vast amount of research that is being undertaken by trainees in the therapeutic professions that never sees the light of day and considers the question: ‘where does all the research go?’ We begin by reflecting upon the relationship between therapeutic practitioners and research, before considering the reasons why trainees do not commonly publish their work (e.g. ‘completing poor quality work’; ‘time’; ‘ignorance/inexperience’ and ‘lack of support from their supervisor’). Particular focus is given to the importance of the research supervisor–trainee relationship and we hope to make transparent the discussions that individuals may engage in when agreeing to work together and produce research papers. This includes a discussion of the issues surrounding authorship credit and order in supervisor–trainee publications. We then go on to outline potential expectations of both these parties during the lifespan of a research project, explicitly considering the following stages: ‘choosing a topic’; ‘design’; ‘data collection’; ‘writing up’; ‘making a submission for publication’; ‘peer review’; ‘feedback and revision’ and ‘publication and beyond’. We finally provide a number of publishing scenarios that individuals may encounter with a view to considering your own view on the issues being discussed.

A case study exploring a trainee counselling psychologist's experience of coding a single session of counselling for therapeutic intentions

Aim: This study explores the authors experience of coding a single session of her therapeutic practice with a client for her therapeutic intentions. Method and analysis: A session of counselling was audio-recorded, transcribed and coded for intentions using the Therapist Intentions List [Hill, C.E., & O’Grady, K.E. (1985). List of therapist intentions illustrated in a case study and with therapists of varying theoretical orientations. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 32, 3–22]. Following this, the trainees journal entry focusing on the training exercise was analysed using tools from the grounded theory approach [Corbin, J.M., & Strauss, A.L. (2008). Basics of qualitative research. Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. London: Sage]. Findings: A core category of “Reflective learning: a process of ‘self-supervision’” was generated with four subcategories: (1) “experience of audio-recording a client session”; (2) “experience of transcribing a client session”; (3) “experience of coding for intentions”; and (4) “further reflections beyond the training exercise.” Discussion: The findings are consistent with literature suggesting that engaging in exercises promoting reflection on practice is experienced as beneficial in training. Furthermore, they are broadly consistent with the suggestion that transcribing and coding a session of counselling and reflecting on ones therapeutic intentions in a paper can be a “profound training experience” [Hill, C.E., Stahl, J., & Roffman, M. (2007). Training novice psychotherapists: Helping skills and beyond. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 44, 364–370, p. 368].