TPC-Journal-V5-Issue3

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 3 394 the end of the first round of interviews and at the end of the second round of interviews. Peer reviewers had access to initial emerging themes and final themes, the researcher’s journal, and coding documentation in order to inform their feedback provided to the researcher throughout the data collection and analysis process. The researcher conducted a debriefing session after receiving feedback from each of the peer reviewers. Lincoln and Guba (1985) recommended that peer debriefing sessions be documented. Therefore, the researcher tracked feedback and subsequent changes to emerging themes in a researcher’s journal as part of an audit trail. Finally, the researcher utilized bridling to establish trustworthiness and acknowledge prior and current experiences with sibling abuse. “Bridling is a reflexive project, is a departure from the often used phenomenological technique of bracketing one’s pre-understandings, and offers ways to imagine a less deterministic view of validity in phenomenological research” (Vagle, 2009, p. 586, emphasis in original). Bridling was chosen over bracketing because the researcher had personal and professional experiences with sibling abuse making it unlikely, if not impossible, to put aside all biases and assumptions. The researcher developed a researcher’s stance and kept a researcher’s journal throughout the data collection and analysis to bridle and manage biases and assumptions. A summary of the researcher’s stance is provided below. Presentation of these assumptions and biases was an effort to increase awareness about what might inadvertently influence this study; it was not an attempt to change or dismiss assumptions or biases, but rather to bridle how these might impact the collection and analysis of the data. Researcher’s Stance The researcher was interested in sibling abuse for several intertwined reasons. As a school counselor for 8 years, the researcher worked with many children and their siblings around issues that were commonly referred to as sibling rivalry. However, the researcher received no training or academic coursework about sibling abuse and in retrospect acknowledged that sibling abuse or violence may have been overlooked with several students. In addition, the researcher is the middle child of five siblings and experienced mild sibling aggression beyond developmentally appropriate sibling rivalry. The researcher acknowledged that these professional and personal experiences furthered an interest to learn more about sibling abuse. The researcher engaged in ongoing reflexivity and continued to engage in bridling professional and personal experiences with sibling abuse throughout the data collection and analysis process. Results A total of seven themes emerged from the two interviews with the participants. The seven themes, as well as corresponding subthemes, have been organized into two overarching categories: (a) responding to sibling abuse, and (b) factors contributing to sibling abuse (see Figure 1). The first category represented participants’ perception of their role as school counselors to respond to students experiencing sibling abuse and ways in which to support families. The overarching category of responding to sibling abuse was supported by the following four themes: keeping students safe, defining the line, multiple victims and needs, and education and awareness. The second overarching category represented what participants perceived as contributing factors that might influence and impact how they viewed and responded to students experiencing sibling abuse. The second overarching category, factors contributing to sibling abuse, was supported by the following four themes: education and awareness, sibling bond, learned violence, and systemic barriers. It was determined that one of the seven themes (education and awareness) overlapped and fit into