Qualitative Research in Rehabilitation Counseling

Qualitative research approaches offer rehabilitation scholars and practitioners avenues into understanding the lives and experiences of people with disabilities and those people and systems with whom they interact. The methods used often parallel those used in counseling and appear to be well matched with the field of rehabilitation counseling. Despite this, qualitative research is still rarely present in Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin (RCB) and other counseling-related journals. Thus, acquainting/reacquainting rehabilitation researchers and practitioners with qualitative research seems appropriate. This article presents an overview of qualitative research, including a discussion of common components and processes and two designs commonly used in RCB—case study and grounded theory. Research previously published in RCB is used to illustrate various aspects of the discussion. The article ends with a discussion of current qualitative research perspectives and how these perspectives challenge rehabilitation scholars to consider new directions.

Understanding and Reporting Qualitative Research

Qualitative research methodology is an often misunderstood and underutilized set of philosophies, approaches, and procedures that lends itself quite readily to the study of phenomena of substantial interest to rehabilitation researchers, research consumers, and individuals with disabilities. For that reason, we propose general guidelines for developing and preparing manuscripts to be submitted for journal publication. We discuss important elements to address in introducing the study, describing the research methods, presenting the findings, and discussing the findings. Throughout the article, we use examples from qualitative research articles to illustrate both the process and reporting of qualitative research.

Content Analysis of the Journal of Career Assessment

A review of the content of the Journal of Career Assessment was conducted from the journal’s inception (i.e., 1993) through 2011. A total of 545 articles were analyzed for this content analysis. The content analysis was based on content, characteristics of empirical studies, and authorship. In terms of content, the major areas were career assessment, theoretically based articles, and issues related to special populations. Strengths of empirical studies included large sample sizes and ethnically diverse samples, whereas limitations concerned an over reliance on college student participants and not reporting information regarding race or ethnicity of the sample. The content analysis concludes with a list of the 15 most productive scholars who have published in the journal.

Evolução dos modelos de pesquisa em psicoterapia

O presente estudo apresenta uma revisão não sistemática da literatura sobre estudos de avaliação em psicoterapia, descrevendo e discutindo as três principais formas para realizá-la: eficácia, efetividade e processo. Os resultados revelaram uma expressiva evolução no curso das pesquisas sobre o tema, desde os pioneiros, passando pelos estudos de eficácia e efetividade (ainda presentes e dominantes) e chegando ao estudo do processo psicoterápico, especialmente com estudos de caso que são realizados de diversas maneiras pelos autores. Porém, também é possível constatar que ainda existem muitas dúvidas e perguntas sem respostas no campo da pesquisa em avaliação de psicoterapia. É possível que novas investigações sobre processo psicoterápico possam contribuir para diminuir estas lacunas.

Questões éticas da pesquisa em Psicologia do Desenvolvimento

A pesquisa em Psicologia do desenvolvimento impõe aos pesquisadores desafios e dilemas éticos peculiares, especialmente em se tratando de investigações que envolvem crianças e adolescentes. O presente estudo tem o objetivo de apresentar e discutir algumas dessas questões éticas, como a obtenção do Consentimento Livre e Esclarecido, o encaminhamento dos participantes para tratamento e a devolução de avaliações, o uso de instrumentos que não foram validados, os dilemas relativos à sexualidade e saúde de adolescentes e as questões éticas referentes à realização de estudos de caso. Os questionamentos e as reflexões propostos basearam-se, essencialmente, na prática de pesquisa dos próprios autores, em grande parte respaldada pela legislação brasileira e pela literatura sobre ética da pesquisa com seres humanos e da pesquisa em Psicologia. Contudo, constatou-se a existência de várias lacunas na literatura sobre o tema, que indicam a necessidade de aprofundamento do debate sobre a ética na pesquisa em Psicologia do desenvolvimento.

Travel into a fairy land: a critique of modern qualitative and mixed methods psychologies

In this article modern qualitative and mixed methods approaches are criticized from the standpoint of structural-systemic epistemology. It is suggested that modern qualitative methodologies suffer from several fallacies: some of them are grounded on inherently contradictory epistemology, the others ask scientific questions after the methods have been chosen, conduct studies inductively so that not only answers but even questions are often supposed to be discovered, do not create artificial situations and constraints on study-situations, are adevelopmental by nature, study not the external things and phenomena but symbols and representations--often the object of studies turns out to be the researcher rather than researched, rely on ambiguous data interpretation methods based to a large degree on feelings and opinions, aim to understand unique which is theoretically impossible, or have theoretical problems with sampling. Any one of these fallacies would be sufficient to exclude any possibility to achieve structural-systemic understanding of the studied things and phenomena. It also turns out that modern qualitative methodologies share several fallacies with the quantitative methodology. Therefore mixed methods approaches are not able to overcome the fundamental difficulties that characterize mixed methods taken separately. It is proposed that structural-systemic methodology that dominated psychological thought in the pre-WWII continental Europe is philosophically and theoretically better grounded than the other methodologies that can be distinguished in psychology today. Future psychology should be based on structural-systemic methodology.