TPC Journal-Vol 9- Issue 1

6 The Professional Counselor | Volume 9, Issue 1 from the open-ended responses. These included seven statements related to core traits and three statements related to mentoring, which are also presented in the Appendix. The following discussion will further describe the results. Discussion The aim of the study was to develop competencies that emphasize knowledge, skills, attitudes, and activities that would provide the foundations for a training guideline in CBPR for the counseling profession. A growing number of counseling researchers highlight researcher and community collaboration (Bryan, 2009; Guiffrida et al., 2011; Wester & Borders, 2014); however, comprehensive training guidelines that outline the competencies required to foster such partnerships do not exist in the counseling literature. We argue that by providing access to this emerging approach to building researcher–community partnerships within the community (particularly practitioners), the clients/ communities’ well-being will be enhanced. CBPR emerged in recent years as the most promising researcher–community approach to research (Lawson, Caringi, Pyles, Jurkowski, & Bozlak, 2015; Lightfoot et al., 2014). The CBPR competencies identified through this study could provide further guidance to researchers for building these relationships in the community. Researchers that advocate for researcher–practitioner partnerships emphasize their potential for advancing treatment for clients (Teachman et al., 2012). These partnerships improve communication and allow research findings to be translated into more practical interventions. We anticipate that by offering a standardized approach for a training guide to fostering researcher–community partnerships, future counseling researchers will receive more consistent and effective training in CBPR practices. CBPR Competencies Consistent with previous literature, all 14 experts agreed that CBPR is about relationships and relationship building. They further allowed that a CBPR framework fosters conversations between partners within the community. The experts also endorsed CBPR as a complementary, not competing, approach to research. Although the results of this study confirm the necessary knowledge components of the CBPR framework, they move beyond making the argument that CBPR is a necessary practice, demonstrating how researchers might effectively implement such practices. Thus, we offer key insights from the remaining categories understood as necessary for competency in a given practice (Toporek et al., 2009) with the aim of identifying best practices and means of implementation for community partnerships. Competency in this framework will enhance methodological choices made by researchers and their partner communities. The following section highlights statements categorized by domain with high expert consensus (100% of the expert panel indicated they either strongly agree or agree). Knowledge. All experts agreed that the knowledge required for counseling researchers to effectively carry out CBPR includes understanding that the term “CBPR Researchers” applies to both academic and community partners (extended to counseling practitioners). Experts also agreed that academic CBPR researchers need to know or be willing to learn about the community’s issues, concerns, and strengths. When researchers include community partners in the research process, it helps to develop trust and respect between these two groups and potentially leads to a deeper interpretation of the findings. Likewise, experts acknowledged the importance of inviting community partners to participate in dissemination of research findings. Finally, CBPR can be effective in bringing community partners together to determine priorities. Skills . The experts agreed that practicing CBPR requires effective and reflective listening skills, group facilitation skills, and the ability to create strong partnerships (e.g., negotiating, collaborating,