recommendations for future research.
Limitations
There were various limitations in the current study. First, this study was not intended to be generalizable, nor can it be, due to the sample size and sampling method. The perspectives of the six participants in this study add value to this research area because of their uniqueness from, and overlap with, extant research, not because they can be seen to fully or fairly represent the Canadian context or all counselling and counselling psychology programs in Canada. Thus, this study is preliminary, exploratory, and
nongeneralizable.
Furthermore, while this study generated a great deal of insight into the topic at hand, it still left many areas unexplored. With such a complex and socially constructed topic, there were many times when I reviewed interviews and saw missed opportunities to more deeply explore what a participant meant by a particular sentiment, phrase, or word. I often made assumptions about what certain words meant to participants and in
retrospect wished I had more time to make sure that I was understanding what they meant. Of course, time was limited and the nature of language is inextricably symbolic.
Similarly, the language that I chose to use in this research study propelled the discussions in certain directions. For instance, using the terms formal and informal when inquiring about the assessments that were used during admissions often directed
and it limited these conversations somewhat. Other terminology would have done the same in other categories, and thus a limitation of this research study, as in many qualitative research studies, is the framework that my choice of language created.
Another great and perhaps limiting influence that I had on this research came with my choices of themes and subthemes. While I worked reflexively and attempted to be transparent and fair in my interpretation of the research findings, I still filtered the discussions and analysis through my own worldview. I created an organizational system that seemed both true to the data and logical, but this system is my own. Thus, another researcher may well have organized the results entirely differently, to perhaps a
dissimilar end. Furthermore, my position as a student alters my understanding of faculty sentiments and of counselling programs, and it is likely that my interpretation would have been different were I in a similar position to my participants.
A more specific limitation of this research was that participants were not provided with interview questions beforehand. This meant that participants had to come up with answers in the moment and that results were biased to whatever came to mind during the interview time. For example, several participants indicated that they would probably think of additional personal qualities salient to an excellent counsellor once the interview was over. While this may have had some benefit, it also means that responses were likely different than they would have been if participants had been given time to prepare.
In retrospect, it seems that my research endeavour explored two vast topics. First, I investigated admissions processes both in general and in terms of counsellor personal qualities in a subset of Canadian counselling and counselling psychology programs.
Second, I investigated faculty beliefs about counsellor personal qualities deemed central to counselling mastery. My research might have been better off had I chosen only one of these avenues and been able to explore it more deeply. While this research seems to have generated much value in both categories, I could have better explored the teachability of personal qualities or the nature of collaborative decision-making processes during admissions reviews, for instance.
Another limitation of this research, as well as much research in general, is the nature of consensus. As mentioned, consensus does not equal truth, and thus, most people agreeing about something does not make it the right or best way. This research is no exception to this. Therefore, I want to add a caveat to much of the consensus found in this study and between this study and others. Sometimes the marginalized voices are what later become more “true”, and sometimes consensus only indicates what most people follow, for better or worse. The self-fulfilling and biased natures of human cognition and human behaviour could be analyzed at many stages of this research and in much of the data. Therefore, while consensus was discovered in this study, it should not be taken to mean that truth was found.
Recommendations for Further Research
Research on personal quality assessments during admissions is both extremely complex and insufficiently explored, both in general (Hernández et al., 2010) and in the Canadian context (Sebok & MacMillan, 2014). This study appears to be one of the first to investigate how Canadian master’s programs execute the admissions process in general and in terms of personal qualities. Thus, more research is needed on this topic. A
quantitative study of admissions processes in Canadian counselling and counselling psychology is advised, in addition to further exploratory qualitative studies.
Furthermore, in reviewing the literature, I found almost no research on the
viability of developing personal qualities through graduate training in counselling. While I could find research on the impact that graduate training had on counselling efficacy, I could not find much at all on how students and counsellors were themselves changed in these ways through their training. Furthermore, though counselling skills have been found to be enhanced through master’s-level study in counselling (e.g., Schaefle, Smaby, Maddux, & Cates, 2005), these skills are often measured as discrete microskills (i.e., eye contact, body language, summarizing, questioning) and thus say little or nothing about the training of dispositional or personal qualities such as warmth, empathy, and self- reflection. Furthermore, demonstrating counselling or microskills does not necessarily mean that a person is, or is perceived by clients as, an effective counsellor, just that they can exhibit or perform certain skills. Therefore, much more research on how graduate training impacts students is needed in terms of how students may gain intra- and interpersonal skills through training. If counsellor personal qualities are important to mastery, their genesis needs to be explored along with the impact that graduate school might have on them.
The research on what makes counsellors effective also seems to be limited and thus in need of further and more diverse exploration. While the international study by Orlinsky and Rønnestad (2005) surveyed nearly 5000 psychotherapists and was significant to this area of research, it provided data only from the perspective of
psychotherapists. Thus, research on client perspectives would provide further insight into what makes for effective therapists. A better understanding of client perspectives is especially important since what has been found to be important from the therapist’s perspective has not necessarily correlated well with what has been deemed important from a client’s perspective (Heinonen et al., 2014). Other perspectives might also be explored (i.e., counsellor educators, counsellor trainees). Furthermore, additional quantitative studies on therapist effects (as opposed to therapist techniques) on client outcomes are advised.
Finally, research on the effectiveness of educational gatekeeping in Canada would be of great use. It seems prudent to know how well Canadian counselling and counselling psychology graduate programs are preparing students to practice counselling and how those students are functioning out in the field in terms of various competencies. It would help to know better how well the profession of counselling in Canada is working, and how this might be connected to the methods of training counsellors or to the gatekeeping imperative itself.
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