TPC-Journal-V5-Issue1

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 1 32 thinking, imaginative variation enables the researcher to derive structural themes from the textural descriptions (Moustakas, 1994). An overall description of the themes that illustrated the essential meaning of the experience was concluded. Audio-recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim for each participant and the transcripts were analyzed by the author and cross-analyzed for consistency by a professional colleague who was not a member of the counseling profession. All of the interviews were thematically and categorically analyzed for commonalities in the phenomenon of crying, and regular discussions were held to achieve consensus on emerging themes from the descriptive to the analytic stages. Three main phases of data collection and analysis occurred over the course of 32 weeks. The first phase was an initial analysis that took place during data collection. The second was a content analysis conducted after the study was completed. The final analysis was thematic, in which categories were used to organize contributions. Categorical analytic procedures described by Creswell (1998) and Merriam (1998) guided analysis of the interview data and narrative questionnaire data, which were combined for analysis. During the interviews, the author bracketed (epoche) experiences that may have contaminated collection, interpretation and analysis of the data. Bracketing is performed by examining possible researcher biases and then setting those biases aside (Moustakas, 1994). This challenge was addressed by the researcher maintaining a journal of thoughts and reactions in order to increase his awareness of and accountability to the process of epoche. Potential researcher biases consisted of the researcher’s personal experiences with crying, his own values and opinions concerning the phenomenon of crying, and his own professional ethics related to crying with a client. During data collection, there was a continuous cycle in which the researcher read, reread, reflected on and interpreted the data. Constant comparison (Merriam, 1998) was practiced, in which multiple readings of the data set were examined and compared with the next piece of data. Unique responses and isolated situations also were identified and analyzed. Ethical Considerations As a professional counselor, the researcher has been conditioned by his training and abides by ethical codes of conduct from professional organizations, most of which do not address the issue of a counselor’s crying in session with a client. These measures were taken during data analysis so as not to interfere with the accurate telling of each participant’s personal experiences of the phenomenon of crying. Ethical approval was granted by the Internal Review Board of the university where participants were solicited. Participants were asked to consent to a voluntary interview about the nature of their experience of crying in session with a client and notified of the estimated time of participation. The results of the interviews were confidential and no personal identification was requested of the participants. Procedures to Ensure Trustworthiness A variety of strategies were used to ensure the credibility, confirmability (validity) and trustworthiness (reliability) of this study. First, a purposeful sample was selected for this investigation to ensure that the participants had a wide range of experiences as counselors in a therapeutic milieu, and in order to increase the probability of participants having experienced the phenomenon of crying in a session. An audit trail (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) was created to ensure that the participants felt confident that the research data showed a fully accurate description of their experiences of crying in session. Records were kept in the form of raw data (e.g., field notes), data reduction (e.g., summaries of theoretical notes), data