Focus Groups: A Practical and Applied Research Approach for Counselors

Counselors increasingly need to justify their costs to third party payers, agencies, school and college administrators, and clients (Myrick, 2003; Whiston, 1996). Counselors are being asked to defend their services, increase their efficiency, and demonstrate successful counseling outcomes (Sexton, 2001). Particularly in the current managed care and accountability-focused environment, client satisfaction with counselors' services and client involvement in selecting services are priorities for the counselor-client relationship (Hayes, Barlow, & Nelson-Gray, 1999). Despite the current emphasis on accountability and client satisfaction with services, it is often difficult to establish the efficiency of counseling because its effectiveness and methods often are not precise or measurable (Whiston, 1996). Although one obvious way for counselors to demonstrate accountability is through assessing clients' perceptions and needs through research endeavors, few counselors and mental health practitioners engage in research (Bauman et al., 2002; Borders, 2002; Hayes et al., 1999; Haynes, Lemsky, & Sexton-Radek, 1987). Clinicians have identified the following reasons for infrequently engaging in research: insufficient time, limited financial resources, lack of assistance, limited individual interest, limited employer support, lack of collaborative research partners, interference of research endeavors with the counseling process, a belief that research does not inform practice, past negative research experiences, and lack of relationship between research and position responsibilities (Haynes et al., 1987). Similarly, Hayes et al. (1999) indicated that the integration of research into practice has not occurred for two reasons: the inadequacies of traditional research methods to address issues that are important to practice and the lack of a clear link between empiricism and professional success in the practice context. In other words, many counselors believe that the research literature is not practical and does not inform their work with clients; furthermore, they believe research does not help counselors assess their clients' needs and the change process, nor does it assess for counselor effectiveness. These findings and conclusions, which suggest that practical research methods that directly relate to work with clients and that do not require a great deal of resources, may be most helpful to counselors. One practical research methodology that may be useful in achieving this end is focus group research. With a rise in postmodern thought, qualitative research methodologies such as focus groups have been gaining in popularity (Kitzinger & Barbour, 1999). We believe that focus groups are an effective means of understanding the counseling process and clients' needs and experiences in counseling. Historically, the study of human behavior has focused on quantitative research in which controlled experiments and statistical analyses are used as a means of uncovering an assumed truth. Loesch and Vacc (1997) stated that in order to align "research methodology with the philosophical underpinnings of the helping professions," research must "evolve from reliance on traditional, primarily quantitative perspectives to encompass greater recognition and acceptance of newer, primarily qualitative methodologies" (p. vi). This qualitative focus can be considered a reaction to traditional counseling research, which has been based on positivistic, modernist, and linear principles (Schwartz & Breunlin, 1983) and an assumption that reality can be objectively measured apart from the researcher. Qualitative research approaches differ from quantitative research approaches in many ways. For example, whereas quantitative researchers believe that a truth exists, qualitative researchers believe that there is no "truth" or "reality" and that reality is socially constructed; quantitative research is deductive whereas qualitative research is inductive; quantitative researchers' role is to be objective whereas qualitative researchers are interactive; in quantitative research participants are blind to the experimental hypotheses, but in qualitative research, participants are fully informed and included in the analyses (Heppner, Kivlighan, & Wampold, 1999). …