TPC-Journal-V5-Issue3

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 3 331 data offered through individual interviews, the focus group and visual representation. During the process of converging findings from all data sources, the first author cross-checked and resynthesized information to create themes that captured the essence of what was being communicated through various data sources. Results The researchers established three stages of RI (i.e., stagnation, negotiation, stabilization) and five primary themes collapsed under each corresponding stage, with meaning assigned based on how participants experienced the different levels. According to Jorgensen and Duncan (2015), RI is experienced on a continuum with each master’s-level counselor allocating different levels to the researcher dimension of professional identity. The stages of RI established in the current study further clarified different points on the broad RI continuum described by Jorgensen and Duncan (2015). Specifically, this research revealed more about the lower (stagnation), moderate (negotiation) and higher (stabilization) levels of RI by examining the participants’ reactions to external facilitators, internal processes related to research, research behaviors, and beliefs and attitudes toward research. The five primary themes included (1) external facilitators of lower levels of RI (e.g., messages from others, program elements, undergraduate education, professional standards); (2) external facilitators of higher levels of RI (e.g., messages from others, program elements, undergraduate education, professional standards); (3) internal facilitators of higher levels of RI (e.g., professional identity conceptualization, conceptualization of research, attitude toward research, beliefs about research, research behaviors); (4) internal facilitators of lower levels of RI (e.g., professional identity conceptualization, conceptualization of research, attitude toward research, beliefs about research, research behaviors); and (5) faculty as salient to the RI process (e.g., mentoring, talking about research, infusing research into courses, modeling research behaviors). The authors discuss the results through the broader categories of stages, using select examples of how primary themes describe each stage. Participants were given fictitious names in order to protect their confidentiality. Stage One: Stagnation The first level of RI was named the stagnation stage because participants seemed to be stagnating in the process of forming their RI. All participants expressed the realization that research is a part of their identity; however, participants in stage one seemed to do little with that realization. The primary themes connected to this stage included the following: internal facilitators of lower levels of RI, external facilitators of lower levels of RI and faculty as salient to the RI process. Participants at stage one often described an internal state of confusion, dislike, avoidance of research and loyalty to their practitioner identity, and they articulated narrow definitions of research (i.e., internal facilitators of lower levels of RI). Participant Shelly provided a visual representation of her narrow definition of research and explained, “That is probably why I don’t like research, because I think of . . . the science guy going cross-eyed.” For Shelly, the word research stimulated a visual representation of a scientist and someone dissimilar to her. She described her conceptualization of a researcher by saying, “Ohhh, not me at all.” Another participant, B.D., highlighted components of confusion, dislike and avoidance: As a researcher, I was more reinforced that I was terrible at it and that I didn’t like it and, most of the research . . . taught to the class was such a joke and the appraisal