TPC Journal-Vol 9- Issue 1

8 The Professional Counselor | Volume 9, Issue 1 resources. Thus, community–researcher partnership outcomes include the enhancement of access to, delivery, and quality of mental health services for communities (Collins et al., 2018), particularly hard- to-reach communities (Brookman-Frazee et al., 2016; Nieweglowski et al., 2018; O’Brien et al., 2018), and culturally appropriate interventions (Cox, 2017; Doll & Brady, 2013). Community-based research can facilitate efforts geared toward increasing the relevance of intervention methods. Identifying competencies for training and proficiency in CBPR. The CBPR competencies identified in this study can serve as the basis for developing a training guideline for counseling practitioners, counselor–researchers, and counselors-in-training. Such a guideline allows stakeholders to maintain awareness of current and emerging research practices such as CBPR and enhances their professional responsibility (American Counseling Association, 2014, Standard C.2.f; Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs, 2015, Section 6.4.d). Identifying competencies for training and proficiency is one approach to curriculum development (Mason & Schwartz, 2012) that we believe can be particularly effective. This study not only identified the necessary competencies for best practices in CBPR, but organized the competencies into meaningful categories that pertain to the four critical domains of proficiency in a given practice: knowledge, skills, attitudes, and activities. The sequence we have provided can be a useful map to the nine principles of the CBPR approach. This study lays a foundation for an effective training guideline that highlights how each CBPR domain builds upon the next. Having a CBPR training guideline will help standardize best practices in the collaborative process, thus enhancing researcher–practitioner engagement. Promoting experiential learning opportunities for students. Counselor educators can connect emergent research and experiential learning in their curricula. The competencies highlighted by the current study may support project-based learning activities in courses that require students to approach community members and partake in a collaborative endeavor. The expectation is that the CBPR competencies would provide counselor educators and counselors-in-training with standardized guidelines for best practice in community-based research that they can apply when ready to pursue a project of their own. The emphasis in this case would be to prepare future counselors for community– researcher partnerships. The benefit of engaging students at the training level in CBPR research through the use of these competencies is that it exposes students to an awareness of the collaborative process by moving beyond knowledge components and learning the skills, attitudes, and activities necessary to initiate a partnership. This could require that a project be spread out over two or three semesters as a component in a field-based practicum or internship. The competencies can be used to structure such courses as well. For example, course objectives for one semester’s internship might include the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and actions aimed at principles one, two, and three, whereas another semester may cover principles four, five, six, and so on. Alternatively, counselor educators might choose to design their research projects through interdisciplinary or interprofessional collaborations across campus that account for CBPR principles (McElfish et al., 2015; Talley & Williams, 2018), which students may be able to join as a component of training. Limitations of the Study One limitation of the study reflects the emergent nature of CBPR approaches in the counseling literature, which is that some CBPR researchers may be limited in their years of formal experience with the practice. For instance, four of the expert participants reported having less than four years of experience conducting CBPR projects. Although years of experience can be an important factor in attributing expertise, several studies have also highlighted that expert status is contingent upon many contextual factors, including recognition by other experts and stakeholders (Mead & Moseley, 2001). In this case, because CBPR is still a new practice in counseling research, peer recommendation was an identifying factor.