TPC Journal V7, Issue 3 - FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 7, Issue 3 219 stance that has been historically held about IF, with an alternative explanation that children’s personalities, developmental stages, and internal drives to meet personal needs may be associated with their IF behaviors. Limitations This study has three main limitations. The comparatively low Cronbach alpha value of the 5-item IF measure was the first concern, which brought about the question of whether or not the 5-item IF was adequate in measuring IF, although low level of internal consistency is noted to be common in short scales (Streiner, 2003). The second limitation was related to participants and self-report surveys, in which reporter bias and social desirability could confound the results; namely, participants might have chosen to respond to the items based on what they believed to be socially desirable responses. Further, using parents as the only participants is likely to arouse doubt on whether or not parental perceptions of children’s IF behaviors were accurate. The third limitation was related to data saturation. Although sample size is not emphasized in qualitative research, data saturation has been consistently suggested, meaning that data collection should continue until the point that no new information arises. A practical concern is that qualitative results based on the four Chinese adoptees’ experiences may not reach data saturation (Creswell, 2013; Teddlie & Yu, 2007), thus potentially affecting the analytical generalization of qualitative findings. Nevertheless, Teddlie and Yu (2007) offered further justification for the need of representativeness and saturation trade-off sampling in mixed methods research. This sampling technique entails unequal emphases of qualitative and quantitative sampling within a mixed methods study; namely, when quantitative representativeness is emphasized, less emphasis is directed to the qualitative saturation of the study. Research and Clinical Implications Results of this study provide crucial implications for future research and practice by professional counselors who work with Chinese adoptees and adoptive parents (e.g., counselors working in school or family settings). Controversies on the categorization of IF (as attachment or other mental health disorders) in the DSM , along with the additional factors proposed by participants, indicate a compelling need to develop a more mature measure for IF, considering a wider range of behaviors beyond the five items. One goal of the new measure is to offer a justification on whether IF truly exists in a child and the severity of the IF tendency. Future research studies should be considered regarding the underlying causes of IF. Researchers should consider involving children in future investigations in order to acquire diverse perspectives on IF and to obtain more generalizable results from the first-person lens. A clinical implication from this study is that professional counselors working with adoptees and adoptive families need to attend to the complexity of IF. IF behaviors certainly need to be monitored and screened because of the risks associated with the behaviors; however, no quick diagnosis should be reached without adequate evidence on the frequency and magnitude of the behaviors. Practitioners need to reassess the criteria defining pathology—whether or not children’s friendly behaviors are truly indiscriminate and to what extent a friendly behavior should be classified as abnormal (Zeanah & Smyke, 2008). These clinical needs call for practitioners’ familiarity with evidence-based research and more exposure to the target population, IF-related training programs, and a more comprehensive clinical questionnaire asking for further evidence to support children’s IF occurrence and severity. Conclusion This study enriched the knowledge of IF through a mixture of qualitative and quantitative findings. Results of this study unveiled Chinese adoptees’ experiences of IF and shed light on factors