The Viva: Some Pointers

The following blog is for Master’s or doctoral level students writing research dissertations in the psychological therapies fields. The pointers are only recommendations—different trainers, supervisors, and examiners may see things very differently.

Many thanks to Jasmine Childs-Fegredo, Mark Donati, and Edith Steffen for comments and suggestions.

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For doctoral students, the viva is the endpoint of your academic journey, and can be the most dreaded part.  So what is it, and what should you do to make it go as well as possible?

The Set Up

Typically, you’ll have two examiners: an ‘internal’ (someone based at your university), and an ‘external’ (someone based at another university).  The external usually carries more weight, and may have more influence on the final decision.  You may also have a ‘Chair’ (normally someone based at your university as well), but their role will just be to manage the viva examination.  They don’t have a role in assessing you.

 Often, you can choose whether or not to have your supervisors present at the viva, though they won’t be able to say anything.  This can feel like moral support, and they can take notes on what might need to be revised.  However, you may also feel more pressure having additional people in the room.

Typically, a viva lasts for about 90-120 minutes, though that can vary a lot.  If longer, you’ll normally get a short break.

What viva examiners often do is to go through your thesis chapter by chapter, asking questions and discussing with you aspects of your work along the way.  Sometimes your examiners will take it turns to ask questions, or the external may take more of a lead.  However, this can depend on the examiners’ areas of expertise.  For example, if your external knows more about your methods, and your internal more about your content area, they may divide the questions up in that way.

Prior to the viva, both of your examiners will have read through your thesis, and written an independent report of what they make of it, and approximately what outcome they think you should be awarded.  In the vast majority of cases, this will be either ‘minor amendments’ (for instance, adding more on reflexivity, discussing the limitations in more depth) or ‘major amendments’ (for instance, restructuring the literature review, revising the analysis).  In a small number of cases, they may also feel that you need to collect more data—a very major amendment.  It’s also possible that they’ll feel the thesis should fail but, thankfully, that’s very rare, and something that your supervisors would normally alert you to before you submit.  Equally rare is that the examiners will just pass your thesis without wanting to see any changes at all, so it may be best to go into the viva assuming that the examiners will ask you to make revisions to some degree—even if it’s just correcting typos.  Before they meet you, your examiners will also have met with each other and shared their views on your thesis, coming up with a list of questions to structure the viva by.

Your examiners may start by telling you their overall assessment of your thesis, or they may not.  If this doesn’t happen, don’t read anything into it—some examiners just prefer not to do so.

After they’ve talked your thesis through with you, the examiners will ask you to leave the room (for 30 minutes or so), and then they’ll discuss with each other what they think the outcome should be and what changes they think you should make.  Then they’ll invite you back in and share the result with you.  If, as normal, they’re asking for some amendments, they’ll go through them with you but you won’t need to write them down, as you’ll be sent the feedback in writing soon after the viva.

What’s it For?

As an external examiner, what I’m wanting from the viva is three things.  First, I want to make sure that the student has really written their thesis, and not got someone else in to do it for them.  So that means I’m looking to see that they can talk about their work in a fairly fluent and knowledgeable way.  Second, although I’ll come into the viva with an outcome in mind and some idea of the kinds of amendments that I might want to see, I’m also open to revising that, depending on how the candidate talks about their work.  For instance, I might feel that they should have conduct a systematic literature review rather than a narrative one, but if they present a convincing argument for why they did the latter, then I may be happy to let that go.  Third, I might want to convey—and explain—to the student why I think they should make certain changes to their thesis, and what those changes are.  

 Remember that your examiners, like your supervisors, will almost certainly want to see you get through.  No one wants to fail anyone—we all know how much work a thesis takes.  But we also will want to make sure things are fair: if it feels like you haven’t got your head around certain things, or done the work that you’ve needed to do, then it wouldn’t feel right to pass you alongside others.  And we’re also aware that your thesis will be lodged publicly, for all to access and read.  So we want to see it in the best shape possible: something you can be proud of and that reflects the best of your abilities.

How to Prepare

Before the viva, have a really good few read throughs of your thesis so that you know it well.  You may have completed it several months before the viva, so it’s important to re-familiarise yourself with it—particularly the more tricky or complex parts.

Practice vivas are essential.  Your supervisor(s) will often be willing to do this with you.  If not, or as well as, do practice vivas with your peers or friends.  Get them to ask you questions about your thesis—particularly the more difficult bits (like epistemology, or your choice of methods, or any statistical tests) so you can get practised at talking these elements through.  Talk to your friends, your family, your cat about your thesis (as much as they can bear it) so that you’re really familiar with what you did and why.

What to Take to the Viva?

One of my personal bugbears, as an examiner, is when students come to a viva without a copy of their own thesis, and then have to borrow mine to answer questions.  So make sure you bring yours along, with sections clearly marked so you can find your way around it when asked about different parts.  It’s fine also to bring a notepad so you can write down questions.

Nerves

It can be really scary doing a viva, and your examiners should be well aware of that and sensitive to it—bear in mind that they will have gone through one of their own.  So if you get really nervous at the start or during the viva, it’s normally fine to ask for just a bit of time to compose yourself—there’s no rush. You may even want to let the Chair or examiners know at the start, if you think that will help. 

What Will They Ask Me?

Mostly, the questions that your examiners will ask will be specific to your particular thesis.  As indicated above, typically, they’ll go through it chapter by chapter, and ask you to explain, or elaborate on, specific aspects of your work.  The questions will often be on the areas that they feel might need further work.  However, if they feel that really not much needs to be changed, they may just be asking about particular areas of interest to discuss them with you.  After they’ve asked you about a particular area of issue, they may follow this up with further questions or prompts.  Questions may be fairly general (for instance, ‘Can you explain your choice of analytical method?’) or very specific (for instance, ‘On page 125, you indicate that the p-value was .004, but on page 123 you write that the regression analysis wasn’t significant, can you explain that please’).  There’s also some standard questions that examiners may ask, for instance:

•  Why did you choose to do this study?

• How did you go about choosing what literature to look at?

• What was the underlying epistemology for your research?

• What was the rationale for your sample?

• Why did you choose this particular method?  Why not xxx method?

• What are the implications for counselling/psychotherapy/counselling psychology practice of your thesis?

• What does your research add to the field?

• What are the limitations of your study?

• What was the impact of your personal perspective on the study? Biases?

• What did you personally learn from the study?

Elaborate, Elaborate, Elaborate

In terms of the actual viva, the main bit of advice I would give candidates is to make sure you really elaborate on your answers.  Of course, you want to stay on track with the particular question you’ve been asked, but don’t be too short or pithy in how you respond.  For a typical viva, the examiners may have prepared, say, 10 questions or so, so you need to talk on each area for, perhaps, 10 minutes; and you don’t want a situation where your examiners are constantly having to pump you for answers.  This is your chance to show your depth and breadth of thinking so, for instance, reflect with the examiners on why you made the choices you did, show how you weighed up different possibilities, talk about the details of what you considered and what you found.  Ultimately, what your examiners want to see is that you can think deeply and richly and complexly about things—rather than that you have reached any single definitive conclusions.  So it’s less about getting it ‘right’, and more about showing all the thinking that has been going on. 

Don’t be Defensive

The other main thing I would say is not to be too defensive when you respond to the examiners’ questions and prompts.  As indicated above, they’ll have a view on what they may want you to revise in your thesis, and while you may be able to change their minds to some extent, you don’t want to come across as too rigid or stubborn in your thinking.  If, when they point something out to you, you think, ‘Actually, they’re probably right,’ that should be fine to say, and better than trying to defend something that you can clearly see is in need of adjustment.  Of course, if you think you’re right, do say it and say why, but you don’t have to defend to the bitter end every element of your work.  Better to show, like all of us, that you can sometimes get things wrong and that you’re open to learning and improving.

Be the Expert You Are

As Mark Donati, Director on our Doctorate in Counselling Psychology at the University of Roehampton suggests, don’t be afraid to express your opinion and say what you really think.  Of course, it’s best if this is based on the available evidence; but sometimes the evidence just isn’t available, and then the examiners may be really interested in your ‘best guess’ of what’s going on.  Remember that you are the expert in the area now.  That’s right, you are.  And the examiners may be really excited to hear from you what the view is from the leading edge of the field. 

Don’t Shame your Examiners

That might sound strange to say, but bear in mind that your examiners are also in a social situation, and may be experiencing their own pressures to ‘perform’.  Dr X, for instance, has come down from University Y, and it’s the first time they’ve met your internal examiner Professor Z, whose work they’ve always admired, as well as Chair W, who they don’t know very well but who seems an important figure.  So Dr X wants to show that they’ve got a good understanding of your work, with some intelligent questions to ask, and some good insights about the field.  What that means is, if you want to keep your examiners ‘on side’, treat them with respect and show an interest in what they’re saying and the questions they asked.  You really don’t want to respond to Dr X in a way that may make them feel foolish in front of Professor Z, or like they have to defend themselves.  What this also means is that some of what goes on in the room may not be about you, but also about the dynamics between the rest of them. 

Enjoy

It’s easier said than done, but if you can enjoy your viva (and many students do end up doing so) then that’s great.  Think of it this way: you’ve got a captive audience for two hours who you can talk to about all the work you’ve been doing for the last few years.  And now you’re the expert, so make the most of it: tell them about what you’ve been really thinking, and about some of the complex challenges doing the thesis, and about all your ideas about where the research should go for the future.  It’s your chance to shine, and if you can really connect with your energy and enthusiasm for your work, your examiners are sure to appreciate that—and so might you.

Publishing a Therapy Book: Some Pointers

So you’ve got a great idea for a book in the counselling and psychotherapy field. You’re all excited. You want to write. What do you do next to turn your idea into a fully-fledged publication? 

Who’s it for?

That’s great you’ve got an idea. But a lot of what you need to do is to turn things on their head and ask yourself, ‘Who’s going to want this book?’ Unfortunately, all the excitement and passion we can feel inside ourselves doesn’t necessarily translate into a viable book for a publisher. Their first question is going to be, ‘Who’s going to want to buy this?’ So you really need to be clear about that. Is it for trainees? Is it for practitioners? On person-centred courses? On integrative courses? And you need to be realistic here. Bear in mind that people have hundreds of books on their ‘to buy’ list, so why would they want to buy yours? A book that is targeted towards trainees is likely to be particularly appealing to publishers, because that tends to be their biggest market. And if it’s the kind of thing that would be a core text on a module reading list, bingo, that’s exactly the kind of thing that many publishers will be looking for. 

What else is out there?

You need to know the field. What other kind of books are like it? If there’s something out there similar, that doesn’t necessarily mean that yours is a no goer, but you need to make it clear to the publishers what the unique selling point (USP) of your book is going to be. Maybe it’s more accessible than the previous texts. Maybe it’s for work with children rather than adults? But you need to clearly state to the publishers why your book will fill a gap in the market that isn’t currently filled. And that means more than just quoting what you’re already aware of. It means doing some research on sites like Amazon or Google to have a really good rummage around to find out what’s out there so far.  

What have you written before?

Publishers will want to be reassured that you can write. If you’ve written articles or journal papers before, that’s great; and a book or two will really convince a publisher that you’re going to produce what you say you will. If you’ve never written before, a book is a tough place to start, and you’re probably better off writing and submitting a few articles first—say for Therapy Today—to get a sense of how you feel about writing and what kind of feedback you get. Anyone, I’m sure, can write brilliantly, but believing we can write brilliantly isn’t the same as actually doing it. It requires the ability to be able put things in clear and succinct ways. And, more than anything else I think, it requires the kind of dogged, slightly OCD personality that is determined to go on and on even when you’re exhausted and tired and just want a glass of wine and sleep. If you’re not sure that’s you, then best to find out first. 

co-authored and edited BOOKS

Writing a book with one or more other colleagues can be a great way to take a project forward: not only do you split the work, but you can get to have some great dialogues along the way. The obvious thing to say, though, is to make sure that you really do get along and you’ve agreed the basics of who’s doing what, etc. You really don’t want to get halfway through the book and discover that you’ve got completely different ideas about how it should end up, or your co-author’s moved to Goa and wants to spend the rest of their life doing yoga instead of writing.

You may also be thinking about putting together an edited collection of chapters on a particular topic. Again, that does split the work and means that you don’t have to know everything yourself; but don’t underestimate the effort of identifying, then editing, a whole series of chapters—and liaising with 10-20 authors along the way. Sometimes, when I’ve done that, it’s felt like it would have been easier to write the whole thing myself! Also, publishers don’t tend to like edited books as much as single or co-authored texts. They’re not usually as coherent, or as flowing, and generally they don’t sell as well. So if you do go down that route, I’d suggest taking a strong editorial lead, to make sure that everyone is writing to the same brief and same overall aims.

Which publisher?

There’s lots of different publishers out there in the counselling and psychotherapy field and you’ll need to decide which one to approach first. It’s ‘bad form’ to approach more than one publisher at any point in time, so you’ll need to start with one and, if they don’t like it, go on to another, etc. To find the right publisher, have a look at similar books in the field and see who they are published by. You may want to start there. If it’s a general counselling or psychotherapy textbook, particularly for trainees, Sage might be a great place to start. If it’s a bit more specialised, and particularly related to person-centred therapy or critical perspectives, PCCS Books could a very good choice. Routledge have a very wide ranging list and tend to publish a bit more academic, and specialised, books than Sage. And then there’s many others—like Palgrave, Open University Press, Oxford University Press—all with their own areas of focus and speciality. If you’re not sure, just go to their websites and see what kinds of book they publish. Do any of these look like yours?

If you know people who have written books with these publishers, you may also want to have a chat with them to see how things went. Were they good to work with, were they reliable and timely? Is there a lot of staff turnover? My own books have been mostly with Sage, and I have to say that they have been brilliant to work with. Not just professional; but supportive, friendly, and always encouraging. And they have the best parties (in fact, a colleague of mine recently wanted to publish with Sage just so that she could get invited!). I’m also very fond of PCCS Books and would definitely recommend them as a publisher to consider approaching. They’re a lot smaller than Sage, but have a real dedication to the books that they publish and care about the counselling and psychotherapy field very deeply. That makes a real difference when you feel like you are writing with a publisher that cares about the field—not just in it for the money.  

Write the proposal

Then you need to write a proposal. This is, perhaps, 10 pages or so, in which you describe what the book is, who it is for, a synopsis of chapters, and a CV, etc. I remember writing my first book proposal back in about 1988, and the mum of one of my friends, who had published with Penguin, made the point (very nicely) that if the writing in the proposal was that bad, how were the publishers ever going to think I could write a good book! So spend some time crafting the proposal and showing, straight away, that you can write.

Importantly, a lot of publishers will have their own format that they want proposals in. For instance, check out the Sage guidelines here. Even if you don’t want to publish with Sage, that will give you some great ideas about the kinds of things you need to cover in your proposal.

Generally publishers will want to see some examples of your writings. Again, send in something that reflects the kind of thing you want to write in the book. if you don’t have that yet, you may want to spend some time developing it before you write your proposal—just so you can show to yourself, as well as the publisher, that you can and do want to write in that way.  An example chapter or two can be a great thing to show to the publisher that the book can really work.

Of course, you could always write the book first and then send the whole manuscript to a publisher, but that's not always appreciated by publishers and can lead to a lot of wasted effort. Usually, publishers want to be involved in the development of a book, and will have a lot of good ideas about how to orientate it to their market.

Do I need an agent?

In this field, almost certainly not. If you think you’ve got a brilliant idea for a best selling ‘pop psych’ book, say for Penguin, then you may want to find a literary agent (you can search on the internet), but the amount of money in psychotherapy and counselling books means that it’s generally not worth it. And, yup, that’s right, not much money. So if you’re thinking that writing books in counselling and psychotherapy is going to make you your fortune, you’ll need to look elsewhere!

What next?

If the publishers think your proposal may be of interest to them, what they’ll then do is to send it out to some reviewers to see what they think, and to get feedback. You normally hear back in a few months. It’s not unusual to get rejected, particularly if you haven’t written before, and, of course, the thing is not to get demoralised but to learn from the feedback and see how you can revise your proposal for the next publisher.

If the publishers do want to take the book on, they’ll then send you out a contract to sign with various financial and timescale agreements. These are normally pretty straightforward, but a key thing to check is the royalties—that is, how much of the book sales you actually get. Normally, this starts off around 7%, so if a book sells for around £25, you’ll get about £2 per book. If you haven’t seen or signed one of these contracts before, try and see if there’s someone you know who has who can have a quick look over it and just check that it all looks OK.

Do I have to have an established publisher?

Absolutely not. There’s many ways to publish a book now that don’t involve going through the traditional route. It’s very easy, for instance, to do some self-formatting and then publish the book on your own website. Or just write the book as a series of blog posts. And that could be a good way of building up to a publication through more established routes over time. For instance, with my latest book on Integrating counselling and psychotherapy, I’d started off just writing a 20,000 word monograph to get the ideas out, and I put them on the internet. It was only several years later that I came back to this and fleshed it out into a full, 110,000 word text.

Is it all worth it?

Hm… 

 I couldn’t say it any other way than, for me, it’s an absolute bastard writing books. It’s a massive amount of work, commitment, focus, struggle—intellectually and emotionally. There’s time when I’ve felt completely out at sea, out of my depth, drowning. I’ve hated the book, hated myself for thinking I could write it, hated the whole process of sitting down for hours a day and trying to scratch out something of a meaning. But when you get that book finally in your hands, or when people say to you things like, ‘Ah, that book you wrote really helped me,’ or, ‘it made such a difference to my work,’ it does feel incredibly rewarding. Personally, I feel like, if I hadn’t of written, my life would feel so much more impoverished: I had so many things I wanted to say, and having that out there, in the public domain, forever, feels an amazing privilege. And it does make me want to say more things, to write more, to continue and deepen that dialogue with the world. So, yes, I guess, definitely worth it. Absolutely. But that’s just for me. And working out whether, for you, the pros are really worth the cons is, perhaps, the first step in the whole process.

 Very best of luck with it.

Presentations: Some Pointers

Present. Why? Because it’s a great way of getting your work out there: letting people know what you are doing, opening up conversation, getting feedback. When you present, you enter into dialogues with your community: people who can help you, encourage you, give you new ideas.

It’s scary. I know. I used to be absolutely phobic about presenting. I used to think, ‘What happens if I just clam up in front of all these people. Just stand there, dumbstruck, with all those eyes on me. Nowhere to go.’ But I did, really, push myself to present: to go for opportunities even if I knew I’d be terrified. And over time (albeit more time than I would have liked), it began to get easier.

For counselling and psychotherapy researchers, a great place to present your work is the annual research conference of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. It’s low key, friendly, and audiences are always really encouraging of people’s work. For counselling psychologists, another great opportunity to present is the BPS Counselling Psychology annual divisional conference.

Normally when you do a presentation, there will be a ‘Chair’ who will make sure you start and end on time, and possibly introduce you.

Research presentation are normally around 20 minutes, and then around 10 minutes for questions and discussion. But each conference will have their own guidelines.

Generally, conference delegates can pick and choose what they go to, and there’s likely to be a few strands of presentations running at once. So it hard to predict how many people will come to your talk, but it’s likely to be somewhere between about 10 and 50.

Research papers can either be presented individually, or as part of a ‘symposium’ (sometimes called a ‘panel’), where papers on a similar theme are grouped together. Normally, you can either submit as an individual paper or as part of a symposium—but if you do have colleagues doing similar work, creating a symposium can make for a more coherent set of presentations.

Prepare… prepare… prepare…

• Know your timing: check that the length of your presentation fits into the allocated time slot. Be particularly wary of having much too much material for the time available.  Keep an eye on the time during your presentation and, if helpful, write on your notes where you should be up to by particular points, so you know if you need to speed up/slow down.

• Practice your slides to get a good feel for them, and so you know what’s coming next.

• Turn up to the room early and check your slide show is uploaded and works. Know the pointer, how to change slides, etc. Technological issues are often the biggest saboteur of a good presentation.

• Try to introduce yourself to the Chair before you start (if there is one), and check how they are going to run things (in particular, how/whether they will let you know how much time you have left).

• If you get anxious doing talks, think about how you could manage that. For instance, do you need things written out in detail to fall back on, or have breathing techniques ready if you get panicky?

• Presenter View on Powerpoint can be a really helpful tool for being on top of your presentation. Essentially, it means that, when you present, you (and only you) can see what slides are coming up, and also any notes on your slides. It can be a bit technologically fiddly though.

• Presenter View or not, it’s generally best to take along a printed off copy of your slides (say, 3 slides to a page), so that you can always quickly check content on other slides when you are doing presentation, and just in case the technology breaks down.

A great short video on what happens when you fail to prepare a presentation, and everything else you can do wrong, can be found here.

Slides

• Keep the lines of texts per slide to a minimum. Generally no more than 6-10 lines of text per slide. If you have more to say, do more slides, they don’t cost anything! (I do really mean this one: so many presentations I see have 20+ lines of texts per slide, making the slide pretty ineligible).

• Related to the above, font size shouldn’t normally be less than 30 points, and definitely not less than 16-20 points.

• Texts should be bullet points, rather than complete sentences (so don’t have full stops at the end of them). Your bullet points should capture the essence of what you want to say (which you can then expand upon verbally), rather than spelling the point out in full.

• Try to avoid

  • Sub bullet points,

    • And sub-sub bullet points.

      • The slides start to get very messy.

• Be consistent in your formatting: e.g. fonts, type of bullets, colour of headings.

• If you have text on your slides, talk ‘to’ it. Don’t have text on the slide that you never refer to. (Though it’s OK to say things that aren’t on your slide).

• Use the space on the slides—make text large rather than small text squashed away.

• You don’t need line spacing between your bullet points. If you take those out you can make your font larger.

• Try to avoid too many citations in your bullet points as they can be distracting. You can cite sources at the bottom of the page or have a page of references at the end of the presentation if people want to follow up. Having said that, if you’re discussing a key text, make sure you give a reference so that your audience can follow up.

• Sans serif fonts (e.g., Arial, Tahoma, Century Gothic) are generally more suited to presentations than serif fonts (e.g., Times New Roman, Palatino). NCS: Never Comic Sans!

• Try to use images/graphics wherever possible, ideally each slide.  You can also embed videos (but check sound works before your presentation). Images and videos can be a great way of conveying the reality of your research: for instance, a photo of the room where the interview took place, or a short video of you doing the coding (bear in mind confidentiality, of course).

• Diagrams can be really helpful, but do make sure you spend time talking them through and explaining what different elements mean. Don’t just leave it up to your audience to work it out for themselves.

• Don’t make slides too complex/‘flashy’: for instance, by using transition sounds.  Everyone hates transition sounds!

• Having said that, a simple transition between slides, like ‘Fade’, can be a nice way of going from slide to slide.

• ‘Animations’ allow you to present one bullet point at a time, and can be helpful for ensuring that you and your audience are on the same points. Again, though, just use simple entrance animations, like Fade, so that it doesn’t detract from your content.

• For a research presentation, it’s generally fine to use the standard sections of a research paper to structure your talk: Introduction (including literature review), Aims, Methods, Results, Discussion. Headings can be on separate slides to keep the sections really clear.

• Give clear titles to each slide so that the audience know what you are trying to say.

• Don’t scrimp on presenting your results: they’re often the most important and interesting part of your paper, so ensure you leave a proper amount of time to talk through them (say 50% of your overall time, if a qualitative presentation).

• Everyone uses Powerpoint—think about trying Prezi.

• Watch copyright—you shouldn’t use images that aren’t in the public domain. You can find many images that are available for reuse via Google Search/Images/Settings/Labelled for reuse.

 ConnectING with your audience

• This is the key to everything: talk to your audience. Try to connect with them. Imagine, for instance, that they are a friend that you really want to explain something to. You’re not trying to be smart, or clever, or get them to approve of you—you just want to explain something to them about what you’ve done, what you’ve found, and what it means. So breathe, focus, speak to the people in the room (or online). Try not to just rattle through what you have to say.

• That means trying, yourself, to connect with the ‘story’ of what you are saying: if it’s meaningful to you it’s more likely to be meaningful to your audience.

• Remember that, nearly always, your audience are there to learn from you—not to judge you. They haven’t come along to your presentation thinking, ‘Hmm, I wonder if [insert your name here] is a good presenter or not. I’d really like to know.’ In fact, the harsh truth is that they’re almost certainly not thinking much about you at all. Rather, they’re thinking, ‘Hmm… I’d be interested to know more about [insert your topic here]’. So the question you should be asking yourself is not ‘How can I prove I’m good enough?’ but, ‘What can I teach these people?’

• Lead your audience through your talk. You may be really familiar with your material, but they are unlikely to be. So explain things properly: from why you did your research, to what your findings mean, to what it says, ultimately, about clinical practice.

• Know who your audience is and adjust accordingly. For instance, a group of experienced practitioners may know, and want, very different things from a group of early stage researchers. Think about what your audience will want from the talk. And what they might already know (that you don’t need to repeat)?

• Try not to read directly from your notes, or from your slides. Best to use them as stimuli.

• Avoid jargon or lots of acronyms. Keep it as clear and easy to understand as you can. If you need to use acronyms, explain clearly what they mean.

• Speak loud and clear—check people can hear you, if need be, particularly at the back.

• Watch that you’re not talking too fast, particularly if you’re anxious. Try the talk out with a friend/colleague and get some honest feedback from them.

• Pace your talk, so that you have enough time for all of it. It’s a classic mistake to get very caught up in the first part of your talk, and then have to rush the rest (and often the most interesting bits).

• Make sure you leave time for questions—so that you’re audience can really engage with you.

• Don’t be defensive if asked questions: accept that there may be things to develop in your paper if you can see that.

• It’s really bad form to run over time, as it means you’re eating into the next person’s allocated slot (or everyone’s coffee/lunch). So if you’re asked to stop, stop. (I once saw a presentation where the speaker, already running 30 minutes over time, starting asking the audience whether or not they thought he should be hauled off. Very, very awkward!)

• It’s fine to bring yourself in to the presentation, and often that’s a way of helping the audience connect with you. For instance, why did you, personally, want to do this study? What did you, personally, get out of it?

• Humour can be a great way of connecting, and cartoons can often lighten a talk and engage and audience. But don’t force humour if it’s not there or if it’s not ‘you’.

• And, finally, don’t stand in front of the projector!

Posters

If you’re not keen on presenting a paper orally, you can always present a ‘poster’. That can be particularly appropriate if your work is still in progress. And it’s another great work of initiating dialogue around your work with other members of the counselling community.

DISCLAIMER

 The information, materials, opinions or other content (collectively Content) contained in this blog have been prepared for general information purposes. Whilst I’ve endeavoured to ensure the Content is current and accurate, the Content in this blog is not intended to constitute professional advice and should not be relied on or treated as a substitute for specific advice relevant to particular circumstances. That means that I am not responsible for, nor will be liable for any losses incurred as a result of anyone relying on the Content contained in this blog, on this website, or any external internet sites referenced in or linked in this blog.

The Discussion Section: Some Pointers

The following blog is for Master’s or doctoral level students writing research dissertations in the psychological therapies fields. The pointers are only recommendations—different trainers, supervisors, and examiners may see things very differently.

The aim of a discussion section is to discuss what your findings mean, in the context of the wider field.

As with all other parts of your dissertation, make sure that your Discussion is actually discussing the question(s) that you set out to ask.

It’s really important that your Discussion doesn’t just re-state your findings (aside from a brief summary at the start). It’s often tempting to reiterate results (just in case the reader didn’t get them the first time!), but now’s the time to move on from your findings, per se. Structuring your Discussion in a different way from your Results can be a good way of trying to ensure this. So, for instance, if you’ve presented your Results by theme, you might want to structure your Discussion by stakeholder group or by research questions.

Generally, you shouldn’t be presenting raw data in your Discussion: for instance, quotes or statistical analyses. That goes in your Results.

Similarly, try to avoid referencing lots of new literature in your Discussion. If it’s so relevant, it should be there in your Literature Review.

Make sure that your Discussion does, indeed, discuss your findings. It shouldn’t just be the second half of your Literature Review: something which bypasses your own research. Emphasise the unique contribution that your findings make, and focus on what they contribute to knowledge. Be confident and don’t underplay the importance of your own findings.

At the same time, don’t over-state the implications of your findings (particularly with regard to practice). Be realistic about what they mean/indicate, in the context of the limitations of your study, as well as its strengths.

This is your chance to be creative, exploratory, and to investigate specific areas in more detail, but try to ensure that it’s always grounded in the data: what you found or what others have found previously. So not just wild speculation.

What’s unexpected in your results? What’s surprising? What’s counter-intuitive? What’s anomalous? Your Discussion is a great opportunity to bring these out to the fore more fully and explore them in depth.

Typical sections of a discussion section (often in approximately this order)

• Brief summary of your findings (but keep it brief—just a concise but comprehensive paragraph or two).

• What your findings mean, in the context of the previous literature. So, for instance, how they compare with/contrast/confirm/challenge previous evidence and theory. This is also an opportunity for you to untangle, and to try and explain, complex/ambiguous/unexpected findings in more depth.

  • This would normally be the bulk of your Discussion. It may be appropriate to structure this section by your research questions, or by the themes in your results. If you do the latter, though, as above, be careful that you’re not just reiterating your findings.

  • Remember that you don’t need to give equal weight/space to all your findings. If some are much more interesting/important than others, it’s fine to focus your Discussion more on those; though all key findings should be touched on at some point in the Discussion.

• Limitations. This should be a good few paragraphs. Try to say how the limitations might have affected the results (e.g., ‘a volunteer sample means that they may have been more positive than is representative’) rather than just what the flaws in the study were, per se.

  • Be critical of what you did; but from a place of reflective, appreciative awareness, rather than self-flagellation. The point here is not to beat yourself up, but to show that you can learn, intelligently; just as you did something, intelligently.

• Implications for clinical practice. Also, if relevant, implications for policy, training, supervision, etc.

  • Try to keep this really concrete: what would someone do differently, based on what you found.  So, for instance, not just, ‘These findings may inform practitioners that….’ But, ‘Based on these findings, practitioners should….’

• Specific implications for your specific discipline: e.g., counselling psychology/counselling/psychotherapy.

• Suggestions for further research.

• Reflexivity: what have you learnt from the study, both in content and in practice.

Conclusion: this can be a brief statement bringing all your thesis together.

Appendices

Following your references, you are likely to want to append various documents to your thesis. These can include:

• Participant-facing forms: e.g., information sheets, consent forms, adverts.

• Full interview schedule.

• Additional quantitative analyses and tables.

• A transcript of one interview (but bear in mind confidentiality—this may not be appropriate). This could also show your coding of that interview.

• All text coded under one particular theme/subtheme, for the reader to get a sense of how you grouped data together (again, bear in mind confidentiality).

(Image by Muhammad Rafizeldi, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

The Results Section: Some pointers

The Results section is the beating heart of your research. You’ve set out on your quest. You’ve told the reader what’s known so far (the Literature Review), and then how you’re going to answer your question (the Methods). Now, finally, after thousands of words of wait, you’re going to tell us what you’ve found out. How did clients, for instance, actually experience transactional analysis, or was there any relationship between therapists’ levels of self-awareness and their outcomes? So fanfare, please, because it’s what we’re all dying to find out about. Put more prosaically, don’t just mutter away your finding under tables or jargon or lengthy quotes that never really tell us what you actually discovered. Own it, make it exciting, tell us—as clearly and succinctly as you can—about the answers that you’ve found.

Two thing, I think, can have a tendency to act as killjoys to the Results section. First is social constructionism. I say this as a (sort of) social constructionist myself, but the problem is that this mindset can take you so far away from the idea that there is anything out there ‘to be discovered’ that the findings, themselves, become almost an irrelevancy. Instead, the focus becomes on the method and the epistemological positioning behind it; and while that might be of some interest, personally, I think it’s only a vehicle to what is most exciting and interesting about research, and that’s discovery. Second, is the researcher’s own lack of self-confidence. If you are a novice researcher, you may feel that what you, yourself, are discovering isn’t really worth much, so you don’t feel there’s really much point emphasising it. If, at some level, you do feel that, it’s worth reflecting on it and thinking about what your research really can contribute. You need to feel, and you need to show, that you are adding something, somewhere.

Another general point: by the time you completed data collection, your data—whether it’s qualitative or quantitative—is likely to be large, complex, messy, and easily overwhelming. Like a dense forest. And that means that when you write it up, your reader—let alone yourself—can easily get lost. So a good write-up really needs to guide the reader through the results. Make it easier for them to find their way—not harder. Remember that you will have spent weeks, maybe months, getting to know your data, so what might seem obvious and clear to you may be entirely unfamiliar to your reader.  Hold their hand as you walk them through it. And if there’s things that, actually, you don’t really understand, don’t just present it to your readers in the vague hope that they’ll get it even if you don’t. Remember, you’re the expert, the leader here (see The Research Mindset). So you need to process and digest the data, make full sense of it yourself, and then present it to your readers in a way that they can easily grasp. Think ‘bird digesting food before it feeds it to its chicks’. You need to do the work of digestion, so that what the reader is fed is as consumable and nourishing as possible.

When leading your reader through the forest of your findings, one really important thing is to try and be as consistent as possible in how you report your results. For instance, don’t report frequencies in the first half of your qualitative write-up but not in the second; or shift from two to three decimal places after the first few analyses. Make rules for yourself about how you are going to report things (and write them down, if necessary) and then stick to them all the way through. And keep the same terms throughout. If, for instance, you switch between ‘patients’ and ‘participants’ and ‘young people ‘ to refer to the people who took part in your study, your reader might be wondering if these are all the same things or different. And, particularly importantly, use exactly the same terms for themes, categories etc. throughout. It might be obvious to you, for instance, that ‘Boosting Self-Esteem’ is the same as ‘Building Self-Confidence’, but for the reader who isn’t inside your head it can get really confusing trying to work out what is what if the terms keep changing.

Qualitative analysis

For a 25,000 word thesis, a qualitative Results section may be 8,000 words or so.

That means it is can be a good idea to give a table of the overall structure of your analysis and themes/subthemes at the start of your Results. However, if you give a table, you should ensure that the wording of the themes/subthemes on the table matches, exactly, the headings/subheadings in your narrative account of the results. Otherwise, it can confuse them even more!

Frequency counts in the table and/or in the text (usually the number of participants who were coded within a particular theme/subtheme), can help give the reader a sense of how representative different themes/subthemes are.  Some researchers dislike this as it can feel too ‘quanty’ (‘small q’) and inconsistent with a ‘Big Q’ qualitative worldview (for discussion of big and small q qualitative research see, for instance, here). It may also be seen as suggesting more precision and generalisability than there actually is.  One option, in the narrative, is to use a system that labels different frequencies within broad bands. The most common one was developed in consensual qualitative research (see, for instance, here), and uses the terms:

• ‘general’: for themes that apply to all cases

• ‘typical’: for themes that apply to at least half of cases

• ‘variant’: for themes that apply to at least two or three, but fewer than half, of cases

An alternative ‘scoring scheme’ for qualitative analysis is detailed here.

In your narrative, it’s generally a good idea to use subheadings (and, if necessary, sub-subheadings) to break the analysis up, and to make it clear to the reader where they are in the account. Nearly always, these would be a direct match to your themes/subthemes/sub-subthemes. Alternatively, for your sub-subthemes, you can italicise the title in the text (making sure it matches what is in the table) to help orientate the reader.

Direct quotes from your participants are an important way of evidencing your themes and subthemes, and really bringing your analysis ‘to life’. They make it clear that your analysis is not just based on theoretical conjectures, but on the realities of people’s narratives and experiences.

However, make sure that you integrate/summarise, in your own words, what participants are saying, rather than just presenting long series of quotes with just a few words in between. Anyone can cut and paste quotes from a transcript to a dissertation. If that’s all your doing, it may fill up your word count, but it really doesn’t show your understanding of what your participants are saying, and how their different accounts fit together. So don’t use quotes as a substitute for a comprehensive and thorough analysis of what your data mean.  And where you do quote your participants, always make it clear what you are trying to ‘say’ with that quote (rather than just dropping it in, and leaving the reader to work it out for themselves), for instance:

• ‘Sarah’s experiences at the start of transactional analysis illustrate how this approach can be experienced as very holding: “When I first went to the therapist…”

• ‘Some participants said that they really valued the psychoeducational component of transactional analysis: ‘I immediately recognised my Parent, Adult, and Child ego states, and found it could help me make sense of so many of my problems’ (Ashok, Line 234).

• Although most participants like the psychoeducational aspect of transactional analysis, a couple had mixed responses. Gemma, for instance, said:

She kept on going on about ‘strokes’, and I just- it seemed a bit jargony…

Along these lines, while long quotes can be very helpful in giving the reader an extended sense of what participants have said, if they illustrate, or evidence, many different points, you may be better off breaking them down into shorter segments so you can clearly explain what each part means.

The format of text in your results can be the same as throughout the rest of your thesis. So, for instance, only indent quotes that are 40 words or more long, don’t italicise quotes, put full stop before the reference for the quote if indented (and after if in the body of the text).

For referencing quotes, you should normally give the pseudonym of the person saying it, and a reference to where it is in their transcript (e.g., line number). So, for instance, ‘… (Mary, Line 230)’. 

Normally, references to other literature should not be in the Results. Save that for the Discussion.

Finally, above and beyond all the pointers above, it’s important that the way you write your results is consistent with your method and epistemology.  So, for instance, if you have adopted a social constructionist epistemology, don’t start making realist claims like, ‘Men were more defensive than females…’   Generally, the more realist your approach, the more you may want to use tables, frequency counts, etc.; while more constructionist epistemologies may lead to less structured and quantified analyses.   

Quantitative analysis

A quantitative Results section is likely to be shorter than a qualitative one, so for a 25,000 word thesis, perhaps 4,000 words or so, though this can vary enormously depending on content.

Rather than just presenting stats and leaving it to the reader to interpret it, make sure you explicitly state what your findings mean (e.g., ‘Chi-squared tests indicate that men were significantly more likely than women to…’). In particular, be clear about which group was higher/lower than which.

In describing your findings, use precise language. Is it ‘significant’/’non-significant’?, refer to the specific effect size and stats: not, ‘This seems to indicate that men were a bit more empathic than women,’ but ‘Men were significantly more empathic than women (F = …).

Remember that, if you are using inferential tests, something is either significant or not. You can generally get away with talking about a ‘trend’ if the p value is between .1 and .05, but be very cautious; and make sure you don’t spend a lot of time interpreting or discussing non-significant findings.

Don’t just rely on significance tests. Give confidence intervals wherever possible and also effect sizes.

Be consistent in how many decimal points you use, and use only as many as is meaningful.  Does it really help the reader, for instance, to know results down to four decimal points? Often just one is enough for means and standard deviations, maybe two or three for p-values. That can also make it clearer for the reader to see what the findings are.

Remember that, with the vast majority of statistical tests, you cannot prove the null hypothesis, so be sure to avoid phrases like: ‘This indicates that men and women had equivalent levels of empathy,’ rather, ‘the difference in levels of empathy between men and women was non-significant.’

Although graphs can look pretty (especially with lots of colours), tables are often a more precise means of presenting data, and generally mean that you can present much more data at once.

It’s rarely a good idea to just cut-and-paste SPSS tables – better to re-enter the data as a Word table so that you can get the formatting of the table appropriate to the journal.

The APA Publication Manual (7th edition) has some great guidance on how to format and present all aspects of quantitative statistics.  It can also help you make sure that you stay consistent in how you format your Results—as well as other parts of your paper. An essential companion, particularly if you are doing quantitative analysis. Further pointers on quantitative analysis are available here.

Disclaimer

 The information, materials, opinions or other content (collectively Content) contained in this blog have been prepared for general information purposes. Whilst I have endeavoured to ensure the Content is current and accurate, the Content in this blog is not intended to constitute professional advice and should not be relied on or treated as a substitute for specific advice relevant to particular circumstances. That means that I am not responsible for, nor will be liable for any losses incurred as a result of anyone relying on the Content contained in this blog, on this website, or any external internet sites referenced in or linked in this blog.

The Methods Section: Some Pointers

The following blog is for Master’s or doctoral level students writing research dissertations in the psychological therapies fields. The pointers are only recommendations—different trainers, supervisors, and examiners may see things very differently.

What should go into the Methods chapter of a thesis, and how much should you write in each area? The headings, below, describe the typical sections, content areas, and approximate length . The suggested word lengths are in the context of a 25,000-30,000 word thesis, and may be a bit more expanded for a longer dissertation (and obviously more condensed for a shorter one).

Epistemology

(Approx. 2,000-3,000 words).

This is often a requirement of Master’s or doctoral level theses, and is a key place in which you can demonstrate the depth and complexity of your understanding. This may be a separate chapter on its own, or placed somewhere else in the thesis.

• Critical discussion of epistemology adopted (e.g., realist, social constructionist)

• Links to actual method used

• Consideration/rejection of alternative epistemologies. 

Design

(Approx. 50-500 words).

• Formal/technical statement of the design: e.g., ‘this is a thematic analysis study drawing on semi-structured interviews, based in a critical realist epistemology’

• Any critical/controversial/unusual design issues that need discussing/justifying.

Participants

(Approx. 500 words).

• Site of recruitment: Where they came from/context

• Eligibility criteria: inclusion and exclusion

• Demographics (a table here is generally a good idea: can by one participant per row if small N, or one variable per row if large N)

  • Gender

  • Age (range/mean)

  • Ethnicity

  • Disability

  • Socioeconomic status/level of education

  • Professional background/experience: training, years of practice, type of employment, orientation

• Participant flow chart/description of numbers through recruitment: e.g., numbers contacted, number screened, numbers consented/didn’t consent (and reasons). Also organisations contacted, recruited, etc.  

Measures/Tools

(Approx. 500 words).

• Interview schedule

  • Nature of interviews: e.g., structured/semi-structured? How many questions?

  • Give key questions

  • Prompts?

  • (Full schedule can go in appendix)

• Measures (including any demographics questionnaire): a paragraph or two on each

  • Brief description

  • Background

  • What it is intended to measure

  • Example item(s)

  • Psychometrics:

    • reliability (esp. internal reliability, test/retest)

    • validity (esp. convergent validity)

Procedure

(Approx. 500-1000 words).

• What was the participants’ journey through the study: e.g., recruitment, screening, information about the study, consent, interview (how long?), debrief, follow up

• Nature of any intervention: type of intervention (including manualisation, adherence, etc), practitioners…  

Ethics

(Approx. 500 words).

• Statement/description of formal ethical approval

• Key ethical issues that arose and how they were dealt with 

Analysis

(Approx. 1,000-2,000 words).

• What method used

• Critical description of method (with contemporary references)

• Rationale for adopting method

• Consideration/rejection of alternative methods

• Stages of method as actually conducted (including auditing/review stages) 

Reflexive statement

(Approx. 250 words).

Remember that the point of your reflexive statement here is not to give a short run-down of your life. It’s about disclosing any biases or assumptions you might have regarding your research question. We will all have biases, and by being open about them you can be transparent in your thesis and all the reader, themselves, to judge whether your results might be skewed in any way.

• What’s your position in relation to this study?

• What might your biases/assumptions be? 

The Literature Review: Some Pointers

A video based on this blog filmed with Rory at Counselling Tutor

Aims

The purpose of a literature review is to bring together what is known, so far, in relation to the question(s) being asked. So, for a decent literature review, the first thing is to be really clear about its aims and the questions you are asking (see Research aims and questions: Some pointers).

A literature review is not an essay. When people write an essay, what they generally do is to draw together various bits of theory and research to try and make one (or several) points. An essay is about constructing an argument and then justifying it. But a literature review is different. You’re not trying to make a point in it or prove something you already believe in. Rather, you’re asking a question and then trying to answer it by searching out all the relevant literature in relation to that question. If you know the answer to your question(s) before you’ve done your literature review then something is not quite right. A literature review, as with all research, should be based on answering a question you don’t know the answer to.

The Scope of a literature review

From degree level to Master’s level to doctoral level (Levels 6, 7, and 8, respectively, in the QAA Frameworks for Higher Education Qualifications), a literature review should demonstrate a systematic understanding of some element of a particular field. In addition, from Master’s to doctoral level, this should be increasingly at the forefront of a discipline and creating original knowledge; and, at doctoral level, meriting journal publication. To achieve all this, it means that your research question(s) needs to be focused and narrow enough to allow for a systematic understanding.  If there’s too much literature on your question to know it all, your question is probably too broad—try narrowing it down.  

Ask yourself, ‘What might I feel confident in saying that I systematically understand, that I can be a leading expert on?’  If that feels way above what you can achieve, narrow your focus down until it’s really possible for you to believe you’re a leading expert in it. So, for instance, if you’re asking a question like, ‘What is the relationship between empathy and therapeutic outcomes?’ you’ll soon find out that it’s going to take a lifetime to lead expertise here: there’s hundreds of research papers on it. But the relationship between self-disclosure and therapeutic outcomes in person-centred therapy—there’s maybe a dozen or so key papers here that means that some level of leading expertise is within your grasp. 

Remember—particularly for Master’s and doctoral level—you also need to be at the forefront of a field.  Not what was talked about 20 years ago, but what is being discussed and debated now.  If you find most of your references are back in the 1980s and 1990s, think about why there’s nothing more current.  Is it that people have stopped being interested in this question?  Is it that you’ve missed the latest research?

At Master’s level, you need to demonstrate mastery of a field.  That is, not just that you know the literature, but that you can do things with it: e.g., evaluate the reliability of different sources of evidence, compare, and contrast ideas. At doctoral level, you should be able to demonstrate, not only mastery, but an ability to do things with the literature in independent and original ways: e.g., come up with new interpretations and perspectives. So at both Master’s and doctoral level, you need to be able to go beyond simply describing relevant literature or findings, towards producing a synthesised understanding of the current state of knowledge in relation to your research questions.

Be critical.  This doesn’t mean insulting or attacking specific pieces of work—e.g., ‘What a tw*t Smith (2007) is for saying…’—and it doesn’t mean finding flaws in research for the sake of it. What it means is being able to extract from the literature what is relevant to your own research question(s), and to evaluate its importance to you.  That might mean, for instance, saying that the participants in a particular study were all White, so the findings may not be generalisable to people of other ethnicities; or that the use of quantitative methods means that we don’t really understand the mechanisms of change.

It’s not the end of the world if there’s one or two or papers that you’ve missed. Everyone misses things, and your examiners/assessors are likely to understand. But try to avoid having big gaps in your review, where whole areas of literature have been overlooked. That’s where systematic reviews can really come in handy.

doing a literature review systematically

Systematic literature reviews are reviews of the literature that have a series of explicitly-stated stages. This might include specifying your search terms, reporting on your ‘hits’, and systematically analysing your findings. They also focus on answering an explicitly-stated question. Different teaching programmes have different requirements about whether a literature review should be ‘systematic’ or not but, often, it’s an indication of higher quality, robustness, and transparency. However, there’s not one form of a systematic literature review and, in general, it can be considered on a spectrum: from highly systematic reviews (including, for instance, multiple coders, see below), to reviews with some systematic elements (such as an explicitly-articulated search strategy). A literature review may also have one or more systematic sections, rather than being a systematic literature review in its entirety. For instance, you might start a literature review by exploring a particular area, identify a question that seems of importance, and then go on to conduct a systematic review of what is known in relation to that question.

Ideally, the stages of a systematic literature review are set out before you start as a written protocol. You can see an example of one here, which we developed to examine the factors that facilitated and inhibited integration in child mental health services (see published paper here). This protocol covers such areas as:

• Aims

• Eligibility criteria for studies (i.e., which studies you’ll accept for review)

  • Study characteristics (e.g., only empirical studies, only studies of young people)

  • Report characteristics (e.g., only studies after 1990, only English language)

• Information sources (i.e., where you’ll look for studies, see below)

• Study selection procedures

• Planned method of analysis

Feel free to use the headings from our protocol for your own review.

There’s a very well-established set of guidelines that set out standards and expectations for reviews (particularly quantitative ones), the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). All the elements detailed here aren’t normally considered necessary for a Master’s or doctoral level review, but even if you don’t do a full systematic review, you may want to draw on certain parts (such as a ‘flow chart’ of the references you used, see below).

At minimum, for any kind of literature review, it is generally useful to show how you went about ensuring that you identified relevant literature in your area. For instance, you could include your search terms, and information about the databases searched, in your Appendix). Probably what’s most important is to show that your literature search, and write-up, weren’t just ad hoc. That is, that you didn’t just ‘cherry pick’ certain bits of literature, or arbitrarily select the papers from a five minute search of Google Scholar. However, you do it, you want to make it clear that you conducted a systematic, comprehensive, and meaningful review of the field: one that gave you the best chance of answering your own research question(s) to the fullest.

Study selection procedures

Generally, the best way to start finding articles for review is by setting out the different concepts within your study (for instance, as a table), and then brainstorming all the different terms that might be used to cover those concepts. For instance, if you were doing a review of research on person-centred therapy and autism, you might develop one set of terms for research (e.g., ‘empirical’, ‘study’, ‘evidence’…), one set for person-centred therapy (e.g., ‘person-centred’, ‘client-centred’, ‘client-centered’…), and one set for autism (e.g., ‘autism’, ‘asperger’s’, autistic…). To begin with, try and generate as many relevant terms as possible, and don’t forget that you want to include US-spelling as well as UK-spelling (like ‘person-centred’ and ‘person-centered’). Different search engines have different ‘wild cards’ that you can use (like * or $), which is where you specify just part of the word. For instance, if you want to search texts with ‘counselling’, ‘counsellor’, ‘counseling’, ‘counselor’, ‘counselled’, etc., you may be able to just use ‘counsel*’ (check the help sites on the specific search you are using). Importantly, you’ll also need to select the field that you want to search in. For instance, do you want to find sources with this term in the title, the abstract, or anywhere in the text—different field selections will give very different sets of results.

Below is an example of the search strategy that we used for our paper on interagency collaboration in child mental health services. You can see that we searched for terms about integration, and then also about children/young people, and mental issues. They needed to be post-1995 (and the study was conducted in 2015). The asterixes are wild cards that we used to ensure we didn’t miss terms with slightly different endings.

Example search strategy for review of integration in child mental health services

Although, ideally, this search strategy is set out before you do your search, it is inevitably going to be an iterative process: moving between testing out particular strategies, seeing how many hits you get, then revising the strategy to either broaden or narrow down the number of hits. For instance, you might start with a search that has ‘child*’ anywhere in the text, but because you get tens of thousands of hits, you revise this to require ‘child*’ to be in the title. As you start to see your hits, you may also want to include additional search terms for your concepts.

Very approximately, you want to find a search strategy that gets you, initially, something like 200 to 2000 hits. More than that becomes unmanageable. Less than that and you’re possibly missing some key articles. What you then do is to go through all the titles, or maybe the titles and abstracts, and identify just those that seem relevant to your review. Inevitably you’ll reject the majority of your hits: for instance, they might not be empirical papers, or they might use the term ‘person-centred’ to mean something entirely different from what you are looking at. That will then leave you with a smaller number of articles where you then might read through the whole paper to see if the article is relevant. Again, when you do that you’ll end up excluding a lot of your papers.

Ideally, particularly at Master’s and doctoral level, you should be keeping track of all the hits/articles you are reviewing and selecting/excluding at each stage. The ideal way to present that is through a Study flow diagram. Below is an example of such a diagram from our study of integration in child mental health services. You’ll see that there were a number of stages, and we explicitly state why we excluded certain papers. This level of detail may only be needed for doctoral or journal publishing level, but at any level you can use even a simple flow diagram to show key elements in the study selection process.

Example study flow diagram for review of integration in child mental health services

Just to add, at publishable level (and, ideally, at doctoral level), it’s good to be able to show some degree of ‘inter-rater reliability’ in the study selection process. What this means is that the selections made were not just down to the particularities of the individual researcher, but would be replicable across different researchers. The way that you do this is to have someone else (say a course colleague) do some of the selection process to, and then see how much similarity there was across selections. For instance, based on reading the full papers, what proportion of papers that you identified as eligible did a colleague also identify as eligible? If that’s less than, say, 50% or so, it suggests that there’s a lot of individual variation in what would be considered eligible for your review, and the criteria may need some tightening up.

If you know there are papers that are relevant to your review but aren’t coming up through your search strategy, that means there’s something wrong with the strategy. Have a look at why it’s not picking up those key papers and revise the strategy accordingly: if it’s missing those papers, it’s also possibly missing other papers that are important to your review. At the end of the day, saying ‘Well, I excluded Papers X and Y because they didn’t come up in my search strategy,’ isn’t enough. Your search strategy should be a tool for finding relevant texts, not the criteria, per se, of what is or is not relevant.

As well as using search engines, a key source to draw on is the reference list in the articles that you have found. Citation searches reverse that process, and can also be extremely helpful. In a citation search, you take key articles and then look at the subsequent articles that have referenced that article. That way, you find the very latest research related to that work. To do a citation search, you simply find the key article on a database and then click on the ‘citations’ link (or in Google Scholar, ‘Cited by…’). You can see this circled in red on the screenshot below:

Example ‘Cited by’ hyperlink in Google Scholar

By the end of this study selection process, you want to end up with somewhere between about five and 30-40 papers for inclusion in your review. More than that and you may well struggle to meaningfully integrate the findings. Less than that and your review is going to be more and more simply a re-statement of what the papers found. But if you’ve asked a really important, meaningful question, conducted a really thorough search, and then just found there isn’t anything out there—or only one or two studies—that can be a meaningful outcome in itself. Importantly, too, don’t take it as a sign of personal failure if you haven’t found any literature out there. The reality is, on a lot of counselling- and psychotherapy-related questions, there just isn’t much research. But identifying that can be really helpful in letting the field know areas to focus on for future.

Information sources

This may depend on the databases that your institution has access to. At minimum, you would ideally want to search Web of Science and PsychInfo, two of the principal sources for psychology-related papers. Google Scholar makes a useful addition to this: it can help you identify a different range of papers, more of the ‘grey’ literature. Don’t worry too much about your university or college library: that’s inevitably going to have a relatively limited array of books and journals.

How do I make my case?

As emphasised earlier, if you’re thinking, ‘How do I construct an argument so that I can show that I’ve got some good ideas here?’ you may be asking the wrong question for a literature review.  That’s fine for an introductory section of a thesis—showing why your question is of importance and relevance—but, as above, the aim of a literature review is to provide a balanced review of what we know so far in relation to a particular question, not to convince the reader of something.  So if the structure of your literature review goes something like, ‘Well x is really important, and so is y, and that means z is likely [and so I’m going to do some research now to show it is]’ you may need to backtrack.  Remember, ask yourself, ‘What is it that I don’t know that I am trying to find out?’  Trying to prove a point is never a great basis for a piece of research.

Format of the write-up

In most cases in the counselling and psychotherapy field, reviews will be of a qualitative nature (i.e., written up in words)—and that’s what I’ll address here. There are also reviews that mathematically combine data, known as meta-analysis. These have their own particular methods (see, for instance, Practical meta-analysis) and are best conducted using dedicated software, such as Comprehensive Meta-analysis.

Use headings and subheadings in each of the sections to keep a clear structure to the paper, and make sure that the hierarchy of these headings is clear to the reader: i.e., make the higher level headings bigger, bolder, etc. as compared with lower order headings. Some pointers on formatting and presenting your work are available here.

You will probably want to start your literature review with a short section detailing the method by which you went about your literature search. Even if you didn’t use a systematic method throughout, it’s worth saying something of how you searched the literature, so that the reader has a sense of what you might have found—and missed.

A table of the final articles that you included in your review can be really helpful, either at the start of the review or as an appendix. Each paper can be a row, and then you can have various key features in the columns, such as the location of the study, the number of participants, key findings, etc. An example—the first few rows from our review of integration in child mental health services—is below.

Example table of studies for review of integration in child mental health services

Try to avoid ‘laundry list’ reviews: ‘stringing together sets of notes on relevant papers’ (McLeod, 1994, p.20) one after another.  For instance:

• Smith (1992) found that…..

• And Brown (2011) found that…

• And Jones (1996) found that…

• And then Patel et al. (2001) found that…

Or narrative/historical version of a laundry list review: For instance:

• First, Smith (1992) found that…..

• Then Jones (1996) found that…

• Then Patel et al. (2001) found that…

• Then Brown (2011) found that…

Remember that, particularly at Master’s and doctoral level, a literature review is not just about précising previous research in the field: providing summaries of what lots of different studies said.  It’s about drawing the research together in coherent and meaningful ways.

So wherever possible, adopt a thematic style of review.  ‘This strategy involves the identification of distinct issues or questions that run through the area of research under consideration. Thematic literature reviews enable the writer to create meaningful groupings of papers in different aspects of a topic.  This is therefore a highly flexible style of review, in which the complex nature of work in an area of area can be respected while at the same time bringing some degree of order and organisation to the material’ (McLeod, 1994, p.20).  In a thematic review, it is likely that several different sources will be cited in one paragraph.

• Some research has shown A… (Jones, 1996; Smith, 1992)

• But other research has shown B (Patel et al., 2001; Jones, 1996), although there are some problems with these findings (Grey et al., 1990).

• More broadly, we know that Z… (White and Brown, 2001; Yellow, 2010).

• And there is also some research to suggest X (Blue, 2003; Grey, 1994).

• What we know so far, then, is that A seems very likely, and that is supported by Z and X, though B raises some problems about this.  

When you review the literature, you don’t need to ascribe every study equal weight and space.  Indeed, if you are, it probably suggests you’re being too descriptive and not discriminating enough.  Some of the studies you look at will be spot-on relevant to your own research, some only tangentially so.  So if you’re extracting what’s really most meaningful to your own questions, you should be taking a lot more from some sources than others.  You’re not reviewing to make all these authors feel like they’re being paid due regard.  You’re reviewing to take what you need from their work to say what we currently know in relation to your question(s).  If content isn’t relevant, leave it out.  If it’s highly relevant, say a lot about it.

A thematic approach really allows you to show a high-level, synthesised understanding.

Whenever you make claims about how things are (for instance, ‘empathy is a key factor in therapeutic outcomes’), you must always provide some reference for this.

Make sure you explicitly state somewhere, either at the end of the literature review or in your design, what the main aims/objectives of your study are, and, if relevant, your hypothesis/hypotheses.

Wherever possible, go back to the original sources and reference those, rather than ‘cited in….’  Citations never looks great—that you haven’t bothered to consult the original sources.  If you really can’t access the original source (e.g., it’s in another language, or out of publication and unavailable), that’s fine, but use citations sparingly.  And be really careful not to take references from a secondary source and cite them as if you have read them: find out what the original authors really said.

EVIDENCE or theory?

Your literature review might be of evidence in relation to a particular question: for instance, ‘How do clients experience person-centred therapy?’ Alternatively, it might be of theoretical propositions: for instance, ‘What is a relational psychodynamic theory of development?’ It could also combine evidence and theory, for instance, ‘What is the relationship between alliance and outcomes for young people?’ There’s no right or wrong here—it is entirely dependent on your question.

What is important, however, is to be clear about when you’re reviewing theory and when you’re reviewing evidence. So, when you write up your review, try not to mix up theoretical statements like, ‘Rogers hypothesised that….’ with empirical statements like, ‘Greenberg et al. found that…’ What someone thinks (even if it was Carl Rogers!), and what someone actually found, are quite separate things. So if you are covering both in your review, it may be an idea to write them up as separate sections.

Just to note, also be careful about mixing up primary studies (e.g., specific pieces of empirical research), with reviews or ‘meta-analyses’ of the field. For instance, you may find through your search strategies a number of papers which review primary studies in relation to a particular question. That’s great, but then use that review to identify the primary studies, and include or exclude those primary studies in your review, as appropriate. You could then note the reviews papers in your introduction, and say about how your review is different. Alternatively, you could do a review of reviews in a field—if there’s a logic in bringing them together and it would be redundant to replicate the review process. But, again, don’t mix that up with a review of primary studies—do one or the other, and be clear about which it is.

The 'target' approach to structuring your literature review

One way to think about structuring your literature review is like a ‘target’. Start with the evidence that is most relevant to your research question (and perhaps do a systematic review of it). Then what else might be most closely relevant? For instance, if you’re doing a study on negative experiences of young people in person-centred therapy, you’d want to start by looking comprehensively for everything on that specific question. But if there’s not much, then you could review the research on negative experiences of young people in other therapies, then negative experiences of adults in person-centred therapy. The more literature there is at the ‘bullseye’ of your target, the less you need to go broader. But if there’s really not much (and that’s fine), then broaden out to literature from which we might be able to extrapolate potential answers to your question(s).

Target approach to writing up a literature review

The ‘pyramid’ approach to structuring your literature review

Another common approach is the pyramid one, where you start with the broadest area of literature on your topic, and then narrow downwards to more specific knowledge leading on to your research question.

Pyramid approach to writing up a literature review

Summary

Ultimately, a literature review is not about showing that you are smart and know things, or that you can follow a pre-specified methodology.  It’s about drawing on all your knowledge and skills to present your best understanding of the answers to your question(s), to date. 

You are to become the master in this field. And your reader is looking to you to give them an informed, rigorous, and up to date understanding. Sometimes, the hardest bit of doing a literature review is feeling the confidence to be able to do that (see my blog on the Research mindset). But you can, providing you choose your scope and your methods wisely.

Further reading

There are several texts on how to write a literature review, relevant to the counselling and psychotherapy field. Torgerson’s Systematic reviews is a good general introduction. 7 steps to a comprehensive literature review has been recommended to me, and there is the popular Doing a literature review in health and social care. John McLeod’s classic Doing research in counselling and psychotherapy gives some excellent guidance on reading the literature (Chapter 2).

Acknowledgements

Photo by Jakirseu, CC BY-SA 4.0

Disclaimer

The information, materials, opinions, or other content (collectively Content) contained in this blog have been prepared for general information purposes. Whilst I’ve endeavoured to ensure the Content is current and accurate, the Content in this blog is not intended to constitute professional advice and should not be relied on or treated as a substitute for specific advice relevant to particular circumstances. That means that I am not responsible for, nor will be liable for any losses incurred as a result of anyone relying on the Content contained in this blog, on this website, or any external internet sites referenced in or linked in this blog.

Why Doesn't Therapy Always 'Work'? A Directional Perspective

Research indicates that a substantial proportion of clients, maybe 30% or more, don’t show reliable improvements during therapy. So why is that? Why is it that therapy doesn’t always lead to change?

In my forthcoming book—Integrating counselling and psychotherapy: Directionality, synergy, and social justice (Sage, 2019)—I’ve developed a framework for understanding social and psychological change that, I hope, can help us to answer questions like this. The basic principle underlying the book is that human beings are fundamental directional: that is agentic, purposeful, acting in meaningful ways; and that we experience psychological difficulties when we can’t ‘actualise’ those directions that are most important to us in life, like self-worth, relatedness, or being in control of our own lives.

From this perspective, a first reason why therapy might not help is because there simply aren’t any ‘levers’ for therapeutic change.  That is, the client is doing everything possible to actualise their most important directions, but the world just isn’t going to let them get there. For instance, a homeless young woman is depressed because she feels unsafe on the streets, marginalised, and drawn into drug dependency.  She wants physical security, self-worth and some sense of purpose; and she is doing everything she can—within her context—to actualise this.  Here, then, there may be nothing that therapy can help her reconfigure.  Rather, what she needs is social, housing, or employment support to help her back onto her path; and probably wider social and political change.

From an existential perspective, the leverage that any of us have will, to a great extent, be limited.  That is, there is a ‘cold’, ‘hard’ reality that is not just about the world we live in, but woven into the very fabric of human being.  For instance, our longings for life, to achieve all the things we want, to have meaning, to stay connected to others, are all, ultimately, be doomed to fail.  And yet, it may be in the very nature of human being to strive for these things.  From this perspective, then, as philosophers like Schopenhauer have argued, we may be condemned to fail: to experience hopelessness, futility, and despair.  Here, therapies don’t ‘work’ because people, ultimately, are going to fail in many areas of their lives: and no amount of talking about it or striving to reconfigure can ever save us from that existential reality.

Another possibility is that levers for change are possible, but that the client and therapist cannot—or do not—find them.  A client, for instance, might have the potential to achieve greater relatedness by improving his communication skills, but the therapist focuses instead on trying to unearth childhood traumas, or on challenging dysfunctional beliefs.  This is why assessment and formulation may be such an important part of the therapeutic process, and to be conducted in a relatively open, ‘non-schoolist’ way.  Through this, therapist and client may be more able to see where the client’s problems lie and the points of therapeutic leverage, and then to either try to address them, or to refer the client on to someone who may be better able to do so.

It is also possible that the levers for positive change are there, but that the client’s directions away from them are just too great.  Mostly, that means that the short-term emotional pain that they fear they will experience outweighs their directions towards longer term benefit.  This may include the anxiety of facing the unknown and doing things differently, the burden of taking responsibility for one’s life, or the guilt of not having made changes sooner.  As we know from the research, short-term directions—proximal, salient, and viscerally-felt—can have a much greater pull than long-term, inevitably amorphous, future possibilities.  Short-term gains are like a powerful magnet, close by, that constantly pull people back into established ways of doing things: overpowering the effects of more distant, albeit ultimately more positive, attractors.

When assessing or working with clients, then, the question of whether there actually, are, levers to therapeutic change should always be kept in mind.  Does therapy have the potential to help this person?  And, if it does, what might draw a client away from ‘pulling’ those levers?  As with ‘motivational interviewing’, acknowledging the power of the forces against change may be an important step in helping it to happen.

If people have a natural tendency to 'actualise' their potential, how is it we get so f...ed up?

It’s the quandary that just about every trainee on person-centred or humanistic courses asks (or, at least, thinks) on the first day of their training program… If human beings have a natural tendency towards self-healing, if they know what’s best for them, if they have an ‘organismic valuing potential’—why is it that we can end up in such messes in our lives?

An immediate answer might be that we have this natural tendency towards actualisation and growth, but it gets suppressed by the world and others around us. The problem with that, though, is that if we’re such actualising beings, why is it that that tendency so weak? Why does it just give up the ghost the moment it gets challenged? Not much of an actualising tendency!

Based on the work I’ve been doing for my new book: ‘Integrating counselling and psychotherapy: Directionality, synergy, and social change’ (Sage, Feb 2019), here’s three inter-related answers that, for me at least, can help to resolve this quandary.

First, we might know and feel what we want and what’s best for us, but we don’t always know how best to get there. I know, for instance, that I want to be close to my friends, or that I want to feel calmer in my life—and that’s my internal, organismic sense of what’s best for me—but that doesn’t mean that I’ll always have the skills or tools to make that happen. With the best will in the world, sometimes we just haven’t learnt the best ways of doing things (I still haven’t learnt how to change a car tyre), or we’ve learnt ways of doing things that might have worked in the past, but don’t work in our present circumstances. Maybe I learnt as a boy, for instance, that the best way to make friends was to act cool and distant because people respected me that way, but as an adult what that actually does is just keep people away. And, of course, people who have been traumatised and deeply hurt in the past learn that, to keep themselves safe, they may need to do things like avoid relationships and intimacy altogether. That’s exactly what they might have needed to get through life as a kid, but as an adult, when the world is different, it’s now become a barrier to closeness. So although we can say that people are always striving to do their best, doing our best isn’t always the best thing that we could be doing. Sometimes we need to learn better ways towards getting the things that we really want and need in life: and that’s something that therapy can be great for. We start with working out what we really want—self-worth, relatedness, autonomy, safety, etc—and work back from there to think about how we might get it more effectively.

Second, sometimes the things that we want are pulling us in opposite directions, so that the more we actualise one potential in our lives, the more we can end up actually getting less of something else that is really important to us. For instance, we really want to make the most of every moment in our lives. We want to be always doing things and being active and engaging with the world around us; but then that takes us away from actualising our potential to have a calm, relaxed, and relatively sane existence. And, of course, the basic tension at the heart of person-centred theory can be understood in this way: that we really want people to like and value us, but the problem is, the more we strive for that, the more we end up doing things that don’t suit other parts of ourselves: for instance, our desire for creativity or freedom or being unique. Again, that’s where therapy can be really helpful because it can give us a chance to weigh up these different wants, and also to find ways of living our lives more ‘synergetically’: that is, getting more of what we most deeply want more of the time. For instance, if the problem is that we want to be really creative, but the people around us are judgey’ about that, then maybe we can come to see that we need different people around us in our lives so that we can get creativity and relatedness at the same time: they don’t need to pull in opposite ways.

And that brings us to the third possibility: that some times the world around us makes it really difficult for us to get to the places that we know and feel, deep down, we really want to get to. An asylum seeker, for instance, wants safety in her life, and to feel self-respect, but living in the midst of a racist social context makes it really difficult for her to get that. And note here, it’s not that her actualising tendency gets squashed or suppressed or goes away, it’s that, with the best will in the world, she can’t get to where she wants to be because her world is standing in her way. In fact, when we look at both of the two other answers above, they’re also very much about a person’s social context. So, for instance, we don’t learn from the world about how best to actualise our most important directions; or the world creates conditions for us (like judgemental friends) that means the actualisation of one direction means the undermining of another. Here, therapy can help us think about how we change our world; but, as in the case of the asylum-seeker above, it sometimes needs more than that. If the problems are obstacles in the world, it needs real social and political change—equality, social justice, ending racism, etc—to help more people get more of what they deeply want more of the time.

So, for me, it makes really good sense to say that people know, deep down, what they want in their lives, and what’s good for them. No-one can tell me that what I really need in my life is closeness, or becoming a writer, or caring for others. I know, ‘inside’, what works best for me, what feels right. But when it comes to me trying to actually achieve that, things can get a lot more complicated, and however much I might try and do my best, I’m not always, necessarily, doing the best thing that I could be doing. Sometimes, for the world I inhabit, it’s not always the most effective way, or the most synergetic way—and that’s where therapy is great. But sometimes, however smart I am, the world just isn’t going to let me get to where I know I want to be: and then we might need to change that world, through personal or collective action. As human beings, we can be amazingly smart, but that doesn’t mean we always get it right all of the time. Recognising that things can be better—both at the individual and at the social level—is what gives us our incredible capacity to grow.

Critical parent or lazy slob? What's the real conflict at the heart of human being?

At the heart of each of the different approaches to therapy is an understanding of human beings in terms of a core inner conflict, and each one sees it in a slightly different way.

In the psychodynamic approaches, it's like a fight between a lecherous, aggressive drunk and a police officer who's wanting to keep the peace. And with a bossy, nasty magistrate pointing fingers over the police officer's shoulder.

In the humanistic approaches, it's like the battle between a free-spirited child and a critical, controlling parent who's worried what the neighbours will think.

In the existential approaches, it's like an argument between two disputants who cannot--and will not--seek a compromise. It doesn't matter what they're arguing about. You can guarantee that one of them will always disagree.

And in the CBT approaches, it's like a row between two flatmates: one a sensible, hardworking student (who's not averse to having fun), and the other a lazy slob who has never really developed the skills or confidence to make the most of things.

Which model is right? When you look at it this way, it's clear that there's no right or wrong, because all these different kinds of conflicts can happen between people--and within people--and there's no reason to think that only ever one of them is the 'right' one. Sometimes, we're lazy and need to give ourselves a kick, sometimes we clamp down on ourselves too much, sometimes we just can't stop arguing with ourselves and need to accept that there's always going to be some element of that. And when we view people in terms of all these possibilities, we get so much more of a richer view of human being than any one perspective can provide on its own.  All our theories are great, but they're even greater when we see them as a rich diversity of resources that we can draw on in helping to understand clients, rather than as exclusive truths. 

Choosing Your Research Topic: Some Pointers

If you're doing a research project in counselling, psychotherapy, or counselling psychology, choosing your topic can be one of the hardest things to get right. And often one of the things you get the least advice on. So how should you go about it?

Read through previous counselling/psychotherapy/counselling psychology research theses

Invaluable! Essential! Probably the most useful thing you can do to get you started. This will give you a real sense of the ‘shape’ of a research study in this field, what is expected of you, and the kinds of questions that you might want to ask.  Should be in your college library or ask a tutor.

originalITY is not everything

Often, in my experience, students come into Master’s or doctoral research projects thinking, ‘I must do something original… I must do something original.’ So they work away at finding some dark corner somewhere that no-one has ever looked into before. Of course, there does need to be originality in your research, but if you’re burrowing away into a corner somewhere then there’s a real danger that no-one else is going to be particularly interested in where you’re going—you’re off into a world of your own. So instead of asking yourself, ‘What can I do that no-one else has ever done before?’ ask yourself, ‘What can I do that builds on what has been done before?’ And that means…

…Get a sense of the field

What are the key questions being asked in your field today?  What are the issues that matter and that are of relevance to practice?  It’s great to draw on your own interests and experiences, but also make sure you develop some familiarity with the field as it currently stands.  This will help to ensure that your research is topical and relevant—of interest and importance to the wider field as well as yourself.  A great thing to do can be to find out what your tutors are researching and what they see as the key issues in the current field.  And do remember that there may be the possibility of developing your project alongside them in some way, so that you can contribute to a particular national- or international-level research initiative.

Also, right from the start, think about how your work and your research question might have the capacity to influence practice and policy.  This may be the biggest research project you’ll ever do.  So make it count.  Think about doing something that can really help others learn how to improve their practice, perhaps with a particular group of clients, or with respect to a particular method.  If it’s a doctoral level project, you’ll become a leading expert in that field, and you’ll be in a position to teach the rest of us how to be more helpful.  So think about what you’d like to find out about, which you can then disseminate to the field as a whole.

If you want to make your research count, have a really long think before you dive into doing research on therapists’ experiences or perceptions.  Lots of students study this: it’s reflexive, and it’s a relatively easy group to access.  But it also raises the question of how interested people are really going to be in how therapists’ see things.  After all, we’ve all been trained in particular beliefs and assumptions, so if we’re the subject of research, we’re often just going to reiterate what we’ve been taught to think.  Generally, clients make a much more worthwhile participant group, because you’re hearing first hand what it’s really like in therapy, and what works and what doesn’t.

Consult the literature

Once you’ve got some idea of what you’d like to look at, find out how other people have tried to answer that question. If no-one has tried to answer it before, that’s great, but you need to be really sure about that before going on to furrow your own path—after all, you don’t want to get to the end of your research to find out that somebody ‘discovered’ the same thing as you decades ago. So have a look on Google Scholar, and particularly on social science search engines like PsychInfo. Undertaking such searches also ensures that your research will be embedded within the wider research field, and it may well give you ideas about the kinds of questions that are timely to ask.

Make sure it's related to therapeutic practice

Choose a topic which is related, at least in some way, to the field of therapeutic practice. Most directly, this may include things like: clients’ experiences of helpful and unhelpful factors, how psychological interventions are perceived from those outside the field, or the applied role of counselling in such fields as education. Exploring people’s experiences of a particular phenomenon—for instance, women’s experiences of birth trauma—can also be related to therapeutic practice, but just be clear what the association might be. For instance, could that help therapists know how to work most effectively with that client group, or to know what issues to be sensitized to.

Find yourself a clearly-defined question

Try to find a single, clearly defined question as the basis for your study (see my Research Aims and Questions pointers). This can then serve as your title. If you can't encapsulate your research project into a single question/sentence at some point, the chances are, you're probably not clear about exactly what it is you are asking.

That's ‘question’, not ‘questions’

One of the biggest problems students face is that they ask too many inter-related questions, with too many constructs of interest, and therefore get very muddled in what they are doing. For instance, they’re interested in attachment styles, and how it relates to dropout as mediated by the client’s personality in EMDR for trauma. But that’s five different constructs (attachment styles, dropout, personality types, EMDR, trauma—and, indeed, a sixth implicit one, which is the outcomes of EMDR for trauma), and generally you want to focus down on just one or two constructs (particularly in qualitative research), or maybe three at most if you are doing quantitative. So, for instance, you could focus on how attachment style influences dropout, or how clients experience EMDR for trauma, or the role of personality styles in mediating outcomes in EMDR for trauma. Or you could even just focus down on how clients experience dropout. All nice, straightforward questions that you can really get into at Master’s or doctoral level depth. So think about the constructs that you definitely want to focus in on, and let go of those that are maybe less central to your concerns. Of course, that’s difficult, and three of the main reasons why are given below—along with the things you may need to remind yourself of:

'I won't have enough material otherwise.'  Your word limit may seem like a lot, but you'll be amazed at how quickly it goes. If you just focus on one question, you will be able to go into it in a great amount of depth—far more appropriate to Master’s or doctoral study than trying to answer a number of questions and subsequently coming away with numerous superficial answers.

'There's lots of different aspects of this area that I'm interested in.' That's great, but you won't be able to cover it all in this one project. You can always do further research after this one. In limiting yourself to just one question, you may well experience feelings of loss or disappointment as you let go of areas you're really interested in, but it's better to feel that loss now than after you've put months of work into areas that are just too dispersed.

'I've already started to ask this other question, and I don't want to lose the reading that I've already done'. Again, it can be painful letting go of things, but there is no value in ‘throwing good money after bad.’ Sometimes in research you need to be brutal, and cut out areas of inquiry that don't fit in—even if you've sweated blood over them. Remember what authors say: the quality of their book is defined by what they leave out!

That’s ‘question’, not ‘answer’

Some of the most problematic projects come about when researchers try to show that a particular answer is the correct one, and consequently won’t let anything—including their own findings—get in their way. So if you really believe something about psychological therapies, like ‘person-centred therapy is much more effective than cognitive-behavioural therapy’, or ‘women make much better counselling psychologists than men’ then you may want to steer clear of this topic. That is, unless you can really get yourself into a frame of mind in which you are open to the possibility that you might find the absolute opposite of what you want—and you can enthusiastically write about the implications of this finding. Good research is like good therapy: you put to one side your own assumptions as much as possible, so that the reality of whatever you are encountering can come through. So, in trying to work out your research question, here’s something to really ask yourself:

What is the question that I genuinely don’t know the answer to (but would love to find out)?

And ‘genuinely’ here means genuinely. It means you really, actually, don’t know what the answer to that question is. If you can find that question, it’ll help enormously in your whole research project, because it’ll mean that you’re genuinely open to, and interested in, finding out what’s out there. That’s research!

But make sure there’s not too much literature on it

If you ask a question on which much has already been written—like the effectiveness of person-centred therapy—then you’re likely to be drowned in material before you even get to the end of the literature review. So narrow down your question—e.g. the effectiveness of advanced empathy in person-centred therapy—until you’ve got a manageable number of references in your sights. Don’t worry if it seems too few, you’ll no doubt pick up more references as you go along. And remember, you need to have full mastery of the literature regarding the question your asking, and it is a lot easier to master the information in five or six papers than it is in hundreds.

What’s often ideal is if you can move one step on from some pre-existing literature: e.g. extending a study about depression in men to looking at depression in women, testing out a theory that you’ve found in a book, or using qualitative research to address a question that has previously only been addressed through quantitative research. So don’t get too hung up on being totally ‘original’: in fact, if you try to be too original you can end up in a sea of confusion with no theoretical or methodological concepts to anchor yourself to. Having an original twist is often much more productive—you’re saying something new, but you’re building on what’s already been laid down.

Think methodology from the start

It’s no good coming up with a brilliant question if there is no way of actually answering it, or if answering it is going to be such a headache that you’ll wish that you never started in the first place. So as you come up with ideas, think about how feasible it might actually be to put them into practice. This is something you may really want to discuss early on with a colleague or research tutor.

Respondents MUST be accessible

In terms of the feasibility of the study, probably the most important question is whether or not you are actually going to get anyone to participate—to respond to your interviews, questionnaires, etc. It is essential to the success of your study that you get a good response rate, so thinking about who you do research with is often as important as thinking about what you do (see my research pointers here on recruiting participants). A number of factors will determine how good your response is likely to be: how big the population is in total, their motivation to help you, how easy it will be for you to get in touch with them, how cautious you will need to be as a consequence of ethical safeguards. So don’t just come up with an idea and hope blindly that someone out there will be interested. However hard you think it will be to get participants, you can guarantee that it will actually be several times harder than that, so make sure this is something you think about, and address, at an early stage.

Ethics come first

The principles of non-maleficence—doing no harm to your respondent—and, ideally, beneficence—promoting the respondent’s well-being—should be an integral part of your research design. So, right from the very start of your project, think about ways in which your research might benefit those that are involved; and also make sure that you have read and familiarised yourself with appropriate ethical guidelines, as well as any other sets of relevant standards.

Aside from ‘doing the right thing’, the issue of ethics will be an important one for you because, in any research study, you will need to submit your project to an ethics committee (see above), and the more sensitive your work, the more committees and the longer the time this is likely to take. For instance, if you wish to carry out research in the National Health Service, you will almost certainly need to go through an NHS ethics committee, which can take many months to consider and respond to proposals. So, as you start to develop your research ideas, be aware of the ethical issues and processes that it might raise, and try to find out about the ethical submissions that such a study is likely to entail. That way, you won’t suddenly find yourself facing a long and uncertain wait before you can proceed with your work -- or, if you do, at least you’ll be prepared for it.

Relational depth: Some frequently asked questions

Over the years--across workshops, lectures and informal discussions--a number of common questions have been asked about relational depth. In the second edition of Working at relational depth in counselling and psychotherapy, due out later this month, I've tried to provide some answers to them.

What is relational depth?

It’s a state of profound contact and engagement between people. 

So is that something that happens at specific moments, or an ongoing quality of a relationship?

Both.  ‘Relational depth’ can refer to particular moments of in-depth encounter (e.g., ‘There was a real instance of relational depth with my client today’); and it can also refer to a relationship in which there is an ongoing depth of connection (e.g., ‘There’s a relational depth between my client and I’).  This is like the distinction between an ‘intimate interaction’ and an ongoing ‘intimate relationship’.  Of course, moments of relational depth can be considered the ‘essential building blocks’ of a deep relationship, but they are not the whole thing.  For instance, you may feel deeply connected to someone even though you hardly ever see them.  Likewise, it’s possible to have very intense moments of connection with someone without ever forming a deep, ongoing closeness. 

Are moments of relational depth distinctive from ‘everyday experiencing’, or is there a continuum from shallower to deeper relating? 

The question here is whether experiences of relational depth are a threshold phenomenon (like being pregnant, where there is only ‘yes’ or ‘no’), or a gradient phenomenon (like hunger, where you can have more or less of it on a continuum).  We tend to talk about moments of relational depth as discrete, threshold phenomenon.  However, what research there is suggests that it is probably closer to a gradient phenomenon.  When people are asked, for instance, to rate the depth of relating at particular moments, there is a smooth continuum from deeper to shallower rating, rather than a discrete cut-off between in-depth moments and all the others.  What we term moments of ‘relational depth’, then, could probably be more accurately described as moments when the strength of relating is particularly deep.  However, these moments of very deep relating seem to be so powerful and memorable that people often remember them as discrete, threshold-like events.

Is relational depth only relevant to therapy?

No.  It can probably be experienced in all walks of life: and particularly with partners and friends. 

And what about in groups?  Can you have ‘group relational depth’?

Yes, and Wyatt has researched and written about this.  However, in this book we focus primarily on relational depth in the one-to-one therapeutic encounter.

Can relational depth happen in short term therapy?

As the client study of Dominic (Chapter 5 of the book) suggests, yes.  However, research also shows that, the longer the therapeutic relationship, the more likely it is that there will be moments of in-depth connection. 

Does relational depth only happen in person-centred therapy?

No.  Research shows, for instance, that clients in cognitive analytic therapy also experience relational depth; as do therapists and clients in many other orientations.  Relational depth, then, can be considered a ‘common factor’ across a range of therapies.

Ok, but does ‘relational depth’ really say anything new?  Isn’t it all there is Rogers’s writings anyway?

Yes and no.  As Steve Cox rightly puts it, the concept of relational depth is inherent in Rogers, but what we have tried to do is to offer a language and a foundation that ‘firms up previously held ideas about relational interactions’. 

So is a ‘relational depth’ therapy any different from ‘usual’ person-centred therapy?

It depends what you mean by ’usual’.  These days, as we said above, most people would agree that there isn’t any one, standard person-centred therapy: it’s a diverse nation with many different ‘tribes’. 

However, if what you mean by ‘usual’ is a classical, non-directive approach, then a ‘relational depth-informed’ approach is a bit different.  With the latter, there’s a particular emphasis on meeting clients in a two-way, interpersonal dialogue; as opposed to primarily providing for clients a more one-way, reflective space.  So, for instance, therapists might be more likely to draw on their own experiences and perceptions: becoming a distinctive ‘other’ to their clients.  Similarly, rather than wholly focusing the work around a non-directive, ‘empathic understanding response process’ , therapists might engage with their clients in a variety of different ways.  For instance, they might ask questions, probe, suggest exercises, and maybe even offer advice: whatever is seen as having the potential to deepen the level of relational engagement.  In addition, because of its focus on genuine human interaction and affirmation, a relational depth-informed therapy might move beyond a ‘non-judgemental “acceptance” of the client to a more active, intentional prizing of their being-in-the-world: not just a “however they experience the world is fine,” but a deliberate affirmation of their being in all its uniqueness’.  In Chapter 1 of the new edition of Working at relational depth, we will see how these differences can be traced back to subtly different assumptions about human beings’ relational needs. 

But you can’t make relational depth happen, can you?

No, you can’t.  Partly because it requires two people to make it happen; partly because you can’t relate deeply to someone if you’re trying to do something to them; and partly because clients are likely to ‘push back’ if they feel pressurised or manipulated.  But, as a therapist, you may be able to create the conditions when relational depth is more likely to be reached, and that is the focus of our book.

Does relational depth need words?

No.  As you will see in Working at relational depth, some of the most powerful experiences of relational depth can happen non-verbally.

Just because one person is experiencing relational depth, does that mean the other one is too?

Research suggests that experiences of relational depth can be shared, but that is not always the case.  In fact, Rooney found that only about one in three moments of deep connection, as identified by clients, were also identified as such by the therapist.  On the other hand, I found about 45% overlap between clients’ and therapists’ ratings of the depth of connection.  What this suggests is that, when therapists are experiencing relational depth with their clients, it is more likely that clients will be experiencing this too, but there is no guarantee that this will be the case.

Surely it would be too much if people were relating at depth all the time?

Yes--agreed.  Buber, the existential philosopher, says that we will always move in and out of deep relating (what he calls the ‘I-Thou’ stance), and that we need to have that distance in our lives as well as the closeness.  But if we do not have any experiences of relational depth, that is where problems can start. 

But isn’t there a downside to relational depth?  For instance, couldn’t it make clients overly-dependent? 

Findings here are mixed.  Therapists and clients nearly always describe experiences of relational depth in positive terms.  However, there are some studies which suggest that feelings of vulnerability, anxiety or pain can be associated with that depth of connection.  In addition, one study found that, in about a third of clients, an in-depth therapeutic relationship had some negative consequences.  In particular, clients were left wanting more from their therapists, and perceived their therapists as being withholding .  This is consistent with evidence that, in unhelpful therapeutic relationship, clients can feel ‘relationally abandoned’ by their therapists .  However, the findings of McMillan and McLeod have not been replicated; and it may be that such experiences are more the consequence of relational depth not being fully realised, or potential precursors to this experiencing, rather than aspects of relational depth, per se.  Nevertheless, more research and scholarship is needed here to understand this ‘shadow side’ of deep encounter.

Every school should have a full-time mental health specialist

One in ten children or young people have a diagnosable mental health problem. Around 30% 'always' or 'often' feel down. These problems are associated with lower levels of academic engagement and achievement, and ongoing difficulties into adulthood. And there's evidence to suggest that young people's mental health problems are getting worse.

Schools are an ideal place to try and tackle these difficulties. It's where young people are. A school-based mental health provision is easy to access for children and young people, it's in a familiar environment, and pupils don't have to travel long distance or take a lot of time out of lessons to get there. Not surprisingly, then, the research shows that young people may be as much as ten times more likely to attend mental health services in a school environment.

Lots of countries in the world make good use of that. In the US, they have counsellors based in most high schools. Israel has school-based counselling psychologists who help the school with a range of mental health issues. In Wales and Northern Ireland, every secondary school now has a counsellor who works with young people on a one-to-one basis.

But not England. Why not? We've got some great initiatives going on right now: making links between schools and child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), and research into class-based interventions and school counselling. But what, surely, we need is a mental health specialist in every secondary school in the UK who can help to ensure that all the pupils of that school (and maybe also the associated primaries) are given the very best mental health care. And full-time -- not just a few days a week. That might be a psychologist, a counsellor, a mental health nurse, a teacher with a mental health speciality -- someone who has a really full knowledge of the different ways in which mental health problems in the young can be tackled. So some of the things that they might do would be:

• one-to-one therapy sessions with highly distressed kids

• facilitating small groups to focus on specific mental health issues (for instance, addictions)

• working with parents and carers

• running mental health and wellbeing workshops in classes/PHSE

• advising the school pastoral care on how to help support specific pupils with mental health issues

• general advice to the school leadership team on creating an emotionally literate school

• liaising with community-based CAMHS, health and counselling services

• training other school staff members in mental health skills

I just can't think of a better way of working to ensure that our children have the very, very best start in life.

[Click here for sources and further information on school-based counselling in the UK]

Writing: Some Pointers

We all have different ways that we like to write, but it's not something that often gets talked about. So here's the stages that I go through when I'm writing something academic. It's maybe not the most creative and free-flowing method; but it ends up with a fairly coherent, clearly structured and comprehensive text which, ironically, people often say reads with a real flow. If you're just setting out on writing essays for a course, or have been doing it for some time but want to improve, you may find some useful ideas here for your own writing.

1. I start off by spending some time reading through books, chapters and papers on the topic. This might involve a literature search, for instance on Google Scholar. Years ago, I used to make handwritten notes on everything I read; but these days I just pencil notes directly onto the book (except if it's a library one!) or paper. This makes the process vastly quicker, meaning that I can cover much more literature in whatever time I have. My notes generally just consist of a word or a short sentence, reminding myself of what I want to cover in my paper. Being obsessive/pedantic, I've even developed a 'star system' over time: two stars if I definitely want to cover a point, one star if I want to review it later, and underlining any other text that seems important.

2. Either before, after, or alongside the reading, I work out a 'skeleton' structure for my paper. I'll either do that using the Style/Headings feature on Office Word (and I always do that at some point, see below), or I'll do it with the bullet point feature, so i can do higher and lower level bullet points. I'll revise and check over that a few times, to make sure it makes sense, and that it's answering the question. If you're writing an assignment for a course, this is something that can be really helpful to run past your tutor or supervisor, so that you know you are on the right lines.

3. I go back over all my notes and type out the points and quotes I want into my document, under the appropriate heading/sub-heading/sub-sub-heading. This is where the headings and sub-headings on Office Word are essential, to give a structure that I can then flesh out. At this stage, I always make sure I add in where the reference came from (both text and page number): so that I can go back to it later if I need to check, and also so that I don't have to scrabble round for references at a later date. Referencing software, like Endnote, can be invaluable here.

4. I read over what I have in my document, move things about using cut and paste, change headings and subheadings, etc. Until I'm a bit happier with the structure.

5. I do a very very rough first draft. What I call 'Draft 0'. It's awful, I give myself permission for it to be, but it's essentially just getting all my points together in some kind of logical sequence so that they roughly follow on one from the other. This often involves some changing around of the structure. I'd never let anyone read it at this point!

6. I go back over it all and try and get a half-decent first draft. Now that I don't need to be consulting my sources when I'm writing, I can get more flow into it. Often, at this stage, I'll be rewriting the whole of what I wrote at the previous stage, or large parts of it. Personally, I often find that rewriting from scratch gives more sense of flow. But only if I'm feeling in flow! This is also where being a fairly fluent typist helps. It's really difficult to do this if you're poking away one finger at a time (see 'Six things that can really help improve your writing' blog entry).

7. And then I go back over it and over it again until I'm happy with it -- sometimes three or four further rewrites; sometimes from scratch again, but building up on the previous text and ideas. A lot of it is dependent, as above, on whether I'm feeling in flow and can just 'run' all the way through it, or through particular sections of it. But having the previously drafted text there is really essential for me in terms of having the content and the material to build on. So even if I am re-writing something afresh, I've always got in front of me what I was trying to say. At this stage, a lot the process feels to be about really trying to bring out the essence of what I am wanting to communicate. It's not about trying to find cleverer words, but going back over it again and again and thinking, 'What do I really want to say here?'

8. Getting feedback from others is essential for me, as part of finishing off a piece of writing. Generally, apart from the skeleton structure, I won't ask for much feedback until I'm at least two or three drafts in, and am fairly happy with it. I ask a few people that I trust, and who I know will be honest with me. And, ideally, I can say to them the specific things I'd like feedback on and the level at which I'd want it (for instance, if I'm a few days away from a deadline, I'll make that clear to people so they don't spend time giving me extensive comments I won't be able to work through). If you're working on an assignment, I would really recommend that you try and run it past peers or friends or family at some point. And the more specific you can be about what you want from them, the better you can use their time.

For me, the process of writing is a bit like what I imagine painting can be. You start off with building the canvas, then some loose pencil sketches to get a sense of what you are going to do, then slapping things down, then refining over and over again with an increasingly fine brush. I don't always love it, but I do love getting to the end and seeing the finished product. and there's everthing I want to say there: in the right place, and saying it like I really want it to.

How do you go about getting what you want from life? Seven stages that might get missed

‘The central “business” of human life,’ writes James Bugental, the existential-humanistic therapist, ‘is the translation of intentions into actuality as we try to have the living experience which we believe we need and want.' In other words, human living is about striving towards the things we want--for ourselves, for others, for our world--and, ideally, with passion, excitement and success.

But how do we go about getting what we want? Based on the psychological theory and research, it's possible to identify seven stages in this process: 

1. Emanation: the bubbling up of wants and desires.

2. Evaluation: checking these out against reality and working out what's best to do.

3. Intention: making a commitment to achieving particular things.

4. Planning: Working out how we are going to do it.

5. Action: Getting on with it, and maintaining our activity.

6. Feedback: Monitoring how we're getting on and making any necessary changes.

7. Termination: Disengaging with our goals and bringing things to an end.

Of course, all these stages are entirely interlinked. And there can be multiple processes going on at once, all at different stages.

Ideally, we go through each of these stages--at least to some extent. So we give our wants and desires free flow to bubble up, and then we think about them in a reflective and mature way, working out what makes sense to take forward. We spend some time thinking about plans for making this a reality, and then get on with it, all the while keeping an eye to what impact this seems to be having. And when we've done enough, we're ready to disengage, enjoy our successes, and turn our attention to something else.

The problems can come, though, if any of these stages get missed out, done badly, or if we get too focused on them to the expense of other stages. So you might find it interesting to think about the stages in this process that you do really well, and those that you could pay some more attention to.

Emanation: Are you someone who pushes down your wants and desires, who finds it hard to be in touch with your intuitive sense of things? Or, conversely, are you someone who has so many different wants and desires bubbling up that they feel overwhelmed and in chaos.

Evaluation: Sometimes it's great to go with our desires. Sometimes, they can take us to some crazy places. So are you someone who tends to skip the evaluation phase, and just pushes on to doing things without putting the effort in to weighing up what's best? Or, conversely, are you someone who spends so much time evaluating and balancing things up that you never actually make a commitment to doing anything?

Intention: And then, do you have the passion, conviction and confidence to try and take forward what you know is best, or falter at this point and go back to evaluating? This is the big existential leap--into the unknown. The point of no return where, yes, you'll either fail or succeed and what you're wanting to do. But maybe, conversely, just run at intention and commit yourself to everything without really filtering down to what your priorities are. We can't do everything we want: try to do it all and you can sometimes end up doing nothing.

Planning: Some people are great planners. Some people are obsessive planners and drive everyone else crazy because they seem so locked in to the planning stage. And other people just think 'What the hell' and skip this stage entirely: leapfrogging from emanation to intention to action. But a bit of planning and forethought can go a long way: research shows, in particular, that working out what you are going to do when things go badly can be essential in reaching your goals.

Action: Once you get going, do you persist with it, or do you get distracted and go onto other tasks before you're anywhere near completing your current one? A million jobs left unfinished?

Feedback: Research shows clearly that attending to how you're doing helps you get to where you want to go to. If you're trying to make friends, for instance, is it working, or do you seem to be putting people off more than attracting them? And do you get defensive and obstinant, and push on regardless. But conversely, are you so concerned about feedback that you're bending and twisting like a willow, always trying to get it exactly right?

Termination: Keeping on regardless can be a waste of energy, particularly where goals are unattainable or futile.  But some people do exactly that. And the research shows it can lead to depression, and may also be tied in with things like obsessive behaviours. Some times, you need to let go, and knowing when to 'hold them and fold them' is, perhaps, one of the greatest life skills.

***

None of us are perfect at getting from where we are to where we want to be. And if you think about the millions of things that we're all trying to do at any one time, it's not surprising. But thinking about the places where you might tend to go wrong could be helpful: getting a bit more balance in your life, and a bit more of what you want out of it.

If you're 'prevention focused', don't expect to be happy (and don't expect to be calm if you're focused on promotion)

I love the chapter in the Oxford handbook of human motivation by Abigail Scholer and E. Tory Higgins (2012): 'Too much of a good thing? Trade-offs in promotion and prevention focus'.  Basically, it says that people vary in terms of how much they are 'promotion-focused' (trying to make good things happen), or 'prevention-focused' (trying to stop bad things from happening). But the really interesting point is that if you are a very prevention focused person--someone who's always trying to stop catastrophes from happening--then you can't expect to experience too much happiness: after all, that's not what you're aiming for. At best, what you're going to experience is calm and relief.  And the same thing holds for people with a natural tendency towards promotion: if you spend your life trying to get new experiences (that's me), then you can't complain if you don't have much calm or respite in your life (that's me too). What's the solution? Scholer and Higgins suggest that it may be best to have a balance of prevention and promotion focus, so that you can make the most of whatever situation and circumstances you encounter. So the first thing to ask yourself is whether you're a promotion or a prevention kind of person. Then think about whether you want to bring a bit more of the other one into your life.

Five Simple Ways to Radically Improve your Papers

A lot of us hate writing essays or papers.  And there's nothing worse than going to all that effort and then getting your work failed, rejected or slated. So here's five things that you might want to learn (if you don't know them already) that can help you improve your writing--and perhaps even help you enjoy it a little more.

1. Touch typing. If you're poking away at your keyboard with one finger at a time, it's really going to make it difficult for you to write with fluency and gusto. You want to be able to capture all those ideas flowing out of you, and then you want to feel fine about writing and rewriting and re-editing without worrying about how much time it's going to take. So try out one of those touch typing programmes if you're a slow typist. Yup, that means using your little finger too, but it'll be worth it. I said to my 12-year old son just recently that touch typing was one of the most important skills I ever learnt in my life (Answer, ‘Dad, that’s so sad!’).

2. Styles. Not Harry. Yes, those annoying things at the top of your screen on Microsoft Word. They might seem pointless, but they're a great way of being able to organise your essay, particularly the different levels of headings. Essentially, if you attribute a style to your headings, and then use the headings tab in navigations, you can see the outline of your essay as you are going along. It means that you've always got a sense of the overall shape of your essay, can put things where they need to go, and means that you'll end up with a much more coherently structured piece of work.

3. Reference software. Programs like Endnote or Refworks are amazing, and there's ways of using them on the Web for free. Essentially, they keep a list of all the text you've read through, and then you can really easily paste them into your essay as and when needed. Brilliant thing is that they also do the reference list for you and if you need to change your style of referencing... hey presto! They can do that at the touch of a button. Never scrabble around amongst your files for references again.

4. Formatting. There's so many things about how to format that are really easy to learn. If you're doing a psychology or counselling course, I'd strongly, strongly recommend getting hold of the APA 7th Publication manual, having a really good read through of it, and then just keeping it as a deskside guide every time you're writing essays. It tells you everything you need to know: how to reference, what to put in the different sections of a research paper, how many spaces you should have after a full stop, etcetera, etcetera. Of course, it's the content of an essay that ultimately counts, but if you use a standardised format your writing will look really professional and you'll be able to express your ideas in the clearest possible way. And once you get into the habit of it it will just stick with you, so why not learn it now?

5. Citation searches. Say you've found a really brilliant book, or research article, on just the topic you're working on. Great. Only problem is, it was written back in 1957: Has anyone done anything relevant since? Citation searches are a really cool way of finding out. Go to Google Scholar (or even better an online database like PsychINFO if your library gives you access to it), search up the text you like, and then click on 'Cited by'. That'll tell you everything since then that references your original text. And, of course, if you find anything else you like, you can citation search that one as well.

What we've learnt from therapy that can help make a better world

Counsellors and psychotherapists don't know everything--there's a lot we need to learn ourselves. Like about the role of social and political factors in shaping people's wellbeing.  But we've had the privilege, as a profession, of over 100 years now of sitting with people and listening really deeply to them, and getting a sense of what genuinely helps them change. So what have we learnt that might help to create a better world?

1. All you need is love. There's loads of theories about what people need: pleasure, power, meaning. But when you work with people day in and day out, what you see is that the need to feel loved is such an incredibly powerful force; and one that can really distort or damage how people have become in the world in an attempt to get to it (or to protect themselves from the pain of not having it). So a better world needs to create systems in which people, right from the very start, can feel loved, valued and cared for. That means making sure our schools are caring places and not harsh, intimidating, bullying ones. It means training parents and carers in how to show love for their kids--and how to not let other things get in the way. And it means ensuring that people have warm and supportive communities to be part of right until their very last days.

2. It's good to talk. It isn't always easy, and there's time when we all want to lock ourselves in our bedroom, but generally talking about stuff is a pretty brilliant way of dealing with things.  Why? Because you don't feel so alone, because someone can help you work out how to deal with things, and because you generally feel less ashamed or awful about whatever's bothering you. So what we need is a world and a culture that can help people open up rather than bottle down. We need professionals like nurses and youth workers who are trained in helping people to talk; and we need media of all forms to pass on the message that there's no shame in being open about who and what we are.

3. The banality of evil. Therapy clients make mistakes. Just like we all do. And you can see how it ends up hurting other people, and often most of all themselves. But what comes really clear when you see people struggling with their lives is that most of the time, maybe all of it, the things that end up hurting others don't come from a place of maliciousness or viciousness or even greed. Mostly, it's people trying to protect themselves and do what they think is right that ends up really hurting others. It's a hard one to accept, because if someone really hurts us it's hard not to think they're 'bad' or it was on purpose, but most of time it just isn't. So a world that is focused on retaliation and punishment and blame isn't going to get very far. If we want to change people, and stop them doing hurtful things to others, we need to start trying to understand them. Of course, that doesn't mean that society should't sometimes lock people away to protect others--change isn't going to come overnight. But, ultimately, if society wants people to do the right thing, it needs to help them understand what's going on and what they're up to. And what they should do differently and why.

4. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Probably the best evidenced of all the therapy techniques is something called 'exposure', for treating anxiety. Essentially, what you do is to encourage people, in a safe and controlled way, to face the things they're afraid of: social situations, snakes, clowns, etc. It breaks the vicious cycle whereby people get scared of something, avoid it, and then get even more afraid because they don't learn that the thing is actually not that bad. What that means, socially and politically, is that we need a world that is supporting people to try out new things, and not get too bogged down in the old and the familiar. Routine, of course, can be great; but if political systems get too conservative and try and push away everything new and different (worst case scenarios being xenophobia, prejudice and discrimination), there's a good chance it will only fuel anxiety and fear. So we need political systems and cultures that can celebrate diversity and difference and creativity -- that encourage us to stay on our toes and be open to what's fresh and new.

5. People are amazing.  One thing you discover when your work closely with people--really, really closely--is just how amazingly resilient and resourceful people are.  You see people who have had their lives crashing around them and who stick at it and express themselves and slowly by slowly, maybe over years, pull themselves back together. And you watch and you cry and you witness the incredible power of the human 'spirit' to fight on and not give up. People are amazing, you just can't put it clearer than that, and we need to live in a world that really recognises that and gives everyone the respect that they deserve. Whether they're homeless, or marginalised, or third world.... if you can see the world through different people's eyes and see what they're doing and they're struggling with you'd never want to treat people casually or with disrespect.  Each and everyone of us is so unique, so special. Social and economic policies need to start with that, more than anything else: A deep care, compassion and respect for each of us here in the world.

Approach trumps avoidance

Just back from PRIDE in Brighton with our kids. So great to see so much celebration: of diversity, of partying, of doing things differently and having fun. Creativity and pleasure and colour and experimentation; and people doing it and other people watching it and everyone enjoying everyone else doing things they love.

It's such a million miles away from so much of what's going on in the world today: walls, fear, wars, people fighting other people and getting scared of things that are different and new. Brexit.  Retreating back into our homeland island out of fear of foreigners coming over and destroying what 'ours'.

In recent years, some psychologists have talked about their being two basic forces, two things that we strive for: 'approach' and 'avoidance'.  Approach is about going out in the world. About learning and growing and diversity and fun. It's about moving towards things--things that we might not fully know--and embracing them in all their otherness. And then there's avoidance, which is about keeping away from things. Pushing things back. Trying to protect what's out. Pride and Brexit. Love and fear. Expansion and contraction.

Of course, we need both. We need to learn to love and grow; but if a rabid lion is coming at us, it doesnt do much good to embrace it with a welcoming grin. We need to protect ourselves and the ones we love. We need to have the ability to shut down.  But there's reasons, psychologically, why taking an avoidance stance towards life tends to cause more problems than an approach one; and that's well supported by the psychological evidence. For instance, people who are more avoidant tend to have poorer mental health, and also tend to do less well in therapy.

So why does avoidance get trumped by approach? First, if you're focused on avoiding things, there's no real way of knowing when you've got to an endpoint.  A person striving for more friends, for instance, can know when they've achieved that goal.  But a person trying to avoid loneliness can never fully know if they've achieved that, as there's always the possibility that it'll return.  Second, closely linked to this, we're less likely to be successful in achieving avoidance goals because the warded off state, in most instances, simply can't be eradicated.  So you can try and 'get rid of foreigners', but you're never going to fully manage it: there's always that lurking feeling that it's never fully done. Third, the means towards avoiding something is often less clear than the means towards approaching something.  How do I avoid loneliness, for instance, when there are so many different ways in which it might be evoked?  It's like trying to hold back the tide.  By contrast, if I'm trying to achieve something, I can create plans and goals and work out a way of doing it.  Fourth, if I'm trying to get TO somewhere, there's likely to be a boost to my self esteem when I get there. But successful avoidance is unlikely to leave me with a sense of achievement.  Finally, trying to avoid things is inherently problematic because it requires us to call to mind the thing we want to avoid, hence making it more salient.  If I want to get rid of foreigners, for instance, I have to think of them, and then that gets me more fixated on what I'm afraid of. 

So while we all get scared of things, and all want to be avoidant at times; it's a philosophy of approach that is generally better for us--and almost certainly for the people and the world that we're engaging with. And I do believe, perhaps naively, that over time our world will move in the direction of approach.  I think it's a natural thing because, at the end of the day, avoidance so often just doesn't get us anywhere. Ten years ago, maybe even five years ago, there's no way that the police would have had a float at the PRIDE parade. But who does that benefit? Who gets something out of it? By contrast, today, seeing the lorries full of gay and lesbian police officers: they're having a great time, the crowds are having a great time watching them. They're off to a party. Is there really, any, sense at all in winding the clock back?

I guess, ultimately, what I'm trying to say here is that there's a good, strong, logical argument for why things like PRIDE and celebrating diversity make so much more sense than things like Trump's wall and ethnophobia. It's not just about being nice and sweet to people and rainbow flags, it's about a rigorous philosophy and ethic of what makes this place a better place for us all.

Feeling good means 'actualising' our directions in life

A lot of contemporary models of human being suggest that we are basically 'directional'. What that means is that we are always 'going to somewhere', always pointed in particular directions. We're striving, trying to improve things, trying to be something and somewhere more than we are: even if it's more chilled out! If that's the case, then we can understand wellbeing in terms of how much we're able to 'actualise' this direction: how much we're aligned with where it is that we want to go.

This actualisation process can be understood in terms of six As. First there is awareness: knowing what our goals are and where we are trying to get to. Second there is anticipation: having a sense that our goals are possible and things that we can achieve. Third comes approach: progressing towards the things that we want; and then comes acceleration: moving towards our wants at an increasing speed. Importantly (but maybe not the most important thing) is then achieving our goals. Finally, and particularly one that may become more important with age, is appreciating what we have achieved.

So, viewed from this perspective, the 'good life' is one in which we have things in life we're striving towards which are important to us, and we have a sense that we're making some kind of progress towards them. We don't have to get these goals all the time, or move rapidly on to other things, but just a general sense that we're pointed in a direction and that we're able to attain it in some way.  And from this perspective, psychological problems are associated with not being clear about what we want from life, or knowing what we want but feeling that it is impossible to get there--or not making any progress at all. Or even it might be about getting to our goals but then not taking the time to appreciate what we have achieved and just rushing on to the next one.

Last thing: if we think about wellbeing in this way, it also shows how what we feel is both about ourselves AND our social and political environment. I might not progress towards the things I want because I don't have good strategies for getting there.  But I also might not progress towards the things that I want because the world is telling me about all these amazing things I should have (a perfect body, the latest phone, a devoted partner) and then not providing me with any possibility at all of getting there. So helping people change the way they go about things can be important--through therapy or self-development work--but what can also be really important is focusing on social and political change. If we create a fairer world with more resources for everyone, then more people can move towards more of what they want more of the time.