TPC-Journal-V3-Issue1

19 The Professional Counselor \Volume 3, Issue 1 Participants The participants were solicited by the investigators through professional listservs, websites of professional organizations, personal communication with counseling professionals and word of mouth. Participants were asked to address the online survey, read the informed consent and begin the survey. Calculating the response rate for the survey was not possible because it was not possible to determine how many counselors actually received the survey. It also is important to note that counselors may have chosen to describe themselves as counselor educators, if they were both counselors and counselor educators. In this case, those counselors’ responses would have been included in the data for counselor educators and not counselors. The total sample for our study included 37 counselors who were post-graduate clinicians/counselors. The counselors who participated in the study included the following: 59% with a master’s degree in community counseling/mental health counseling, 8 % with a master’s degree in a counseling-related field with a certificate in addiction, 3% with an educational specialist degree in a counseling-related field, and 22% with a doctorate in a counseling-related field. Fifty-eight percent graduated from CACREP-accredited programs with 2009 standards and 3% from CACREP-accredited programs with 2013 standards. Thirty percent graduated from a regionally accredited program that was not CACREP-accredited, and 9% graduated from an academic setting that was not regionally accredited or CACREP-accredited. It must be noted that five participants omitted the question regarding accreditation of their most recent counselor education program. Instrument A survey was developed to obtain counselors’ opinions and experiences with assessing, diagnosing and treating PAs. The survey questions were based on a thorough review of the literature and were relevant to the participants’ knowledge of PAs and their experiences as clinicians. The survey questions were developed in accordance to current survey methodological research guidelines (Dillman et al., 2009), and then the questions were sent to all members of the IAAOC Process Addictions Committee to asses for content validity. Finally, they were revised based on the members’ feedback. The survey included both closed- and open-ended questions and was designed to be completed in 10–15 minutes. A grand tour question is a type of descriptive inquiry that provides information on an experience or phenomenon. According to Spradley (1979), using grand tour questions constitutes an emergent quality of the interview process that results in subsequent questions. One grand tour question was used: “What are your thoughts or feelings about working with clients who present with PA?” In addition to the grand tour question, descriptive survey questions and open-ended text boxes were provided for participants to elaborate on their responses. Data Collection and Analysis Zip Survey was used to post the surveys and collect responses as well as to analyze the demographic and quantitative data. Participants received an email with a link to the survey requesting their participation. Upon opening the link, participants read the informed consent and agreed that they understood the nature of the study by continuing with the survey questions. Participants were assured in the informed consent that their responses were anonymous and confidential. The survey program collected the responses and aggregated them into charts and Excel files. The quantitative results are descriptive data and are reported as such in the results section. Participants also had the opportunity to utilize text boxes within the survey in order to give a rich description of their experiences. The qualitative data obtained from participants who shared their ideas and experiences through the text boxes embedded in the survey also were utilized as data in this study. According to Moustakas (1994), data must be in written form in order to organize qualitative research; the qualitative data was in written form for this study as the Zip Survey collected the written words of participants via typed text. Organizing the text responses and following Moustakas’s (1994) seven steps adapted from Van Kaam’s (1959, 1966) interview analysis process were key steps during the data organization phase of the study. Additionally, both quantitative and qualitative data were compared with one another to achieve triangulation (Onwuegbuzie & Johnson, 2006). Results The total sample for this study included 37 counselors. They provided information on their training and clinical experiences related directly to the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of clients with PAs. Specifically, the participants responded to