TPC Journal-Vol 9 Issue 3-FULL

The Professional Counselor | Volume 9, Issue 3 175 Data Collection Participants completed a demographic questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. The first author created the interview protocol questions based on what is known in existing literature and areas that warrant further exploration (Hays & Singh, 2012). For instance, there is existing research on religious coping practices; however, the questions in this interview protocol seek to understand Christian African Americans’ perspectives in particular. The qualitative nature of this study created an opportunity for participants to give their feedback on Pargament et al.’s (1998) classifications of negative and positive religious coping. The semi-structured format of the interview allowed the researchers the flexibility to follow up on participants’ responses and explore topics that emerged during the conversation (Hays & Singh, 2012). The interviews ranged from 26 to 48 minutes, with a mean of 36 minutes. The interview protocol included the following questions: (1) If you have participated in counseling before, please tell me why you chose to go to counseling and about the process; (2) In what ways, if any, have you been encouraged to seek out professional counseling? In what ways, if any, do you feel you have been discouraged from seeking out professional counseling? (3) How would you define religious coping? (4) What are some ways you use your religious practices to cope with life circumstances? (5) In what ways do you think religious coping is beneficial? What are some limitations? (6) Often, people who engage in religious coping are less likely to seek professional counseling services. Why do you think this may be? (7) Tell me about a time you encountered a life challenge and used your religion to cope. What did this look like? How was it helpful? How was it not helpful? (8) Researchers have identified “positive” religious coping strategies and “negative” religious coping strategies. What are your reactions to these? (9) Are there any that you would classify differently? Are there any that you would take away? and (10) Can you think of times when you have used positive religious coping? What about negative religious coping? The interview concluded with asking the participants if they would like to share anything they were not asked and to reflect on their experience in the interview process. Each participant completed the interview individually. Data Analysis We followed Moustakas’ (1994) modification of the van Kaam method to phenomenological data analysis. We met to discuss bracketing and process our reactions and insights before the data analysis. Then, we analyzed two interviews together and identified themes. These meetings provided the second author with an opportunity to learn the process and feel more comfortable coding data independently. Next, we proceeded to review the transcripts individually, reconvening and discussing emerging themes. Themes emerged from a series of steps that included grouping participants’ words, reducing and eliminating raw data that is not related to the phenomena or might be repetitive, and clustering related statements into overarching themes. We refined the emerging themes again by checking them against the participant interviews a second time. The first author created textural and structural descriptions and shared them with the second author for discussion (Moustakas, 1994). Trustworthiness It is essential that researchers in qualitative studies ensure trustworthiness to maximize rigor (Hays & Singh, 2012). There are several strategies that researchers utilize to increase trustworthiness, and we infused several of these tools in our current study. The procedures in the current study reflect strategies commonly enlisted in counseling research (see Flynn et al., 2019), including our engagement in bracketing throughout the research process. Additionally, participants received the themes and were invited to provide feedback as a part of the member checking process (Hays & Singh, 2012). Participants who responded ( n = 2) agreed with