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RESEARCH ON CONSULTING — WITH, FOR OR AGAINST PRACTICE? The question as to why psychotherapists participate in psychotherapy research or not has been researched in some studies. The results show that there is low motivation to actively participate in psychotherapy research. Bednar & Shapiro” asked 16,100 psychotherapists whether they were willing to have two of their cases audio-recorded for scientific purposes. Only 85 psychotherapists agreed, in other words less than 1%. The authors summarised that there are good reasons to believe that the attitude towards psychotherapy research shown by most of the clinical practitioners is not merely indifference (as is usually assumed) but uncooperativeness and ultimately antagonism**. In a study by Wynne and colleagues*’, 98% of the 845 contacted psychotherapists declined to take part. The study design required the audio-recording of a therapy session. Vaughan and colleagues* reported that they had to cancel their clinical study with patients because they were unable to recruit a sufficient number of participants. Most of the patients refused to participate in a study after the psychotherapists introduced them to the study. The authors interpreted this effect as an indirect result of psychotherapists’ dismissive attitude towards psychotherapy research. The question as to the specific reasons why participation in (psychotherapy) research is accepted or declined is however still relatively under-researched. Two studies examined the motives for non-participation by psychotherapists*. Reasons for non-participation were mainly the lack of time and general criticism towards the study design or the research instruments to be used (e.g. audio recordings). Vachon and colleagues? also asked which aspects could potentially increase the willingness to participate in psychotherapy research. As supporting possibilities, external factors such as more time, financial compensation or research designs which did not feature audio recordings were (ed.), Empirische Forschung in der Psychoanalyse: Grundlagen — Anwendungen — Ergebnisse, Gießen, Psychosozial-Verlag, 2005, 63-76. 32 R.L. Bednar - J. G. Shapiro, Professional Research Commitment: A Symptom or a Syndrome, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 34(3) (1970) 323-326. #3 Ibid. % M. Wynne - M. Susman - S. Ries - J. Birringer,— L. Katz, A method for assessing therapists’ recall of insession events, J counsel Psychol, 41(1) (1994) 53-57. 35 §.C. Vaughan — R. D. Marshall — R. A. Mackinnon — R. Vaughan — L. Mellman — S. P. Roose, Can we do psychoanalytic outcome research? A feasibility study, Int J Psychoanal, 81(3) (2000) 513-527. 36 Bednar — Shapiro, Professional Research Commitment; D. O. Vachon — M. Susman - M. E. Wynne — J. Birringer — L. Olshefsky — K. Cox, Reasons therapists give for refusing to participate in psychotherapy process research, Journal of Counseling Psychology, 42(3) (1995) 380-382. 57 Vachon et al., Reasons therapists give for refusing. 53 ¢
