STIMULUS QUESTIONS 1
Stimulus Question Assignment
Danielle Wadsworth
Department of Counselor Education and Family Studies
COUC 515: Research Methods and Program Evaluation
Liberty University
STIMULUS QUESTIONS
Stimulus Question Assignment
1. Why do you think some scholars are advocating a need to broaden scientific training
in counseling?
I think it is important counselors to have accessed to different approaches to be able to
better serve their clients. That could come from psychological, theological, or scientific
viewpoints.
2. In what ways do you think scientific thinking might be useful for both practice and
science activities?
This way of thinking allows us as counselors to analyze an process situations in a way
that we can consider multiple factors that could impact the outcome. This is important
when helping clients cope with multiple situations at once. Being able to think using the
steps observe, compare, sort, predict, experiment, evaluate, and apply will be helpful with
research (Hepper, et al:, 2016)
3. Identify five activities you can do to incorporate scientific thinking into your
counseling practice.
Completing assessment questions
Treatment planning
Research on interventions
Story telling
Active consumers of research
4. If the counseling profession more strongly emphasized the scientist role rather than
the practitioner role, what would be the advantages and disadvantages?
Disadvantage: Scientists are too often confused with technicians, the people who apply the
findings of science but without theoretical understanding.
Advantage: Scientists overlap with the best artists in their capacity for alternative ways of
perceiving, in their creativity, and in their openness to new experiences.
5. If the counseling profession more strongly emphasized the practitioner role rather
than the scientist role, what would be the advantages and disadvantages?
Advantages: Practitioners and scholars are the stewards of the profession. We can
undoubtedly learn a great deal about human behavior from the more subjective ways of
knowing; it is clear that many ideas and breakthroughs regarding therapeutic orientations and
techniques have initially sprung from practitioners’ direct experience with people.
Disadvantage is that practitioners may not always have the ability to see alternative ways of
perceiving things the way that scientists do.
STIMULUS QUESTIONS
6. What do you see as the most important advantages of integrating science and
practice in the counseling profession?
When integrating the two it’s like the clinician is overarching an upgrade to the way they are
communicating with the client and in turn the simple upgrades can yield greater information
increase client engagement ad promote better outcomes.
7. What do you feel very passionate about in your future as a counselor? Can you see
any way that research could help you enhance the work you will do within the areas
that excite you the most?
I am very passionate about helping the homeless and juveniles. I have learned that I have to
do a tremendous about or research to be able to help these individuals as there a strict laws
when it comes to juveniles especially. I would like to be able to help the homeless get off the
streets and help juveniles that are in the system get out and become productive members of
society.
8. What concerns, obstacles, and fears do you have about scientific training?
I am concerned that I have not put in enough time to research the things that I am truly
passionate about and that is going to cause me to fail. I also do not know where to start to get
funding for the many projects that I want to take on. I fear that when it comes to scientific
training I will not fully understand the data and that will cause me to fall short of my many
goals.
9. Examine the reactions you listed in question 8; why do you think you have these
reactions?
I have always had this passion but I have been too afraid to step out on faith and do the work
that the Lord has called me to do. I need to research more so that I am more comfortable.
STIMULUS QUESTIONS
References
Hepper, P.P., Wampold, B. E., Owen, J., Thompson, M. N., & Wang, K. T. (2016). Research
design in counseling. Cengage Learning. ISBN: 9781305087316
