The First CENT Research Proposal
Hi, I am currently seeking (6 or 8) research participants for the following research
project. In exchange, you will receive a considerable amount of CENT therapy by email exchanges. Cognitive Emotive
Narrative Therapy (CENT), is interested in people's stories, because we believe people live their lives 'inside of stories'.
I will provide you with a model 'story'; e.g: 'The Story of (My) Origins', 'My Story of Relationships', etc., and
ask you to think about my story, and how it relates to the story of your own origins. I will then ask you to write up
the story of your own origins. As you submit each story to me, I will provide some hours of analysis, and feedback that
analysis and commentary to you. If you have any outstanding issues with my feedback, I will do further work on that,
up to the point at which you are satisfied that you have resolved your issues. This process can be repeated for each
of the five CENT stories.
1. What am I proposing to research?
I am interested in how individuals manage particular phases and challenges in their
lives; how much common ground there is between individuals (and especially individuals who ‘get stuck'); and what the
main differences between individuals' journeys and difficulties might be.
I am not proposing to find out "what is absolutely true"; but rather what seems true for six or eight specific
individuals, as they negotiated their main life challenges. I want to collect their stories, and analyze them for common
themes, using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: (Smith and Osborn, 2003)[1].
My main contribution to knowledge is likely to be:
A way for counsellors and therapists to understand certain specific stories in the lives of individual clients.
What stories are likely to prove most productive? What stories are likely to be less productive? What kinds of
issues might surface in any particular story? Also, I want to provide a way to inform counselling and psychology students,
and interested members of the public, of some important features of the interior life of suffering humans.
The main benefit of my research is likely to be that more readers (of the eventual book)
will have a better understanding of the storied nature of human thinking/emotion/behaviour. Many individual readers may
develop greater empathy for individuals who are traversing particular phases in the construction of the story of their lives.
And many individuals may find narrative elements in the book that help to liberate them from constricting or confining narratives
that currently dominate their lives. But more than that, I want to provide an educational experience for counsellors,
psychologists, psychotherapists, and students of those disciplines, with a moving story of human suffering, and triumph over
suffering. (A surprisingly healthy butterfly emerging triumphant from a battered and damaged chrysalis).
2. How am I proposing to do the research?
I intend to offer free email counselling to six or eight individuals who are happy to write about some of the core
stories of interest in CENT, which include:
(a) The Story of Origins.
(b) The Story of Relationships.
(c) The Story of Personal Responsibility and Character
Development.
(d) The Story of Career Development/Setback.
(e) The
Story of Rethinking/Re-deciding about Life.
To help the research
participants, I will present them with my Stories (a to e), one at a time, and ask them to think about how this story relates
to their own lives. Does it seem in any way familiar or similar? Is it significantly different? If so, in what
ways? What were the main difficulties that arose in their own story; how well did they manage those difficulties; and
are any of those difficulties still around today and in need of resolution?
I will read each individual's (current) Story; and provide developmental feedback for them to consider. My
aim will be to be therapeutic and helpful.
Individuals are free to
opt into this research (if and when accepted), once they are informed by the details below; and they may opt out at any time
they choose, without any need to offer any form of explanation. (The decision about joining the research project will
be made jointly, by the researcher and the research participant, by telephone conversation, and supporting email submission).
3. Who will be involved in my research?
I will be working with a group of 6 or 8 individuals who are not facing acute psychological
distress. They will be individuals who volunteer, and who are chosen because their problems have been grumbling along
at a low level for a good number of years, and are not causing crises. Their problems will be to do
with their early childhood origins; their earliest family relationships and how those experiences impacted their later relationships;
perhaps they have been drifting through their lives, rather than taking active responsibility for their goals and direction;
they may be struggling with career and related issues; and they may now recognize the need to rethink their perceptions and
perspectives on life.
4. How will I collect my data?
As indicated in sections 2 and 3 above, I will be working with a group of 6 or 8 individuals
who want to receive email counselling in return for participating in this narrative inquiry.
I will ask the research participants to:
(a) Write a story
(beginning with [a] above, and gradually working through the whole list, over a period of several weeks) and submit it for
counselling/therapy analysis.
(b) Keep a diary on a daily basis during
the period of therapy, in which they should write down whatever comes up: emotions, memories, thoughts, images, etc.
They will keep this diary in typed form, on a computer hard drive, and upload it as email attachments to me from time to time
(probably weekly).
Once the research participants have each received
their developmental feedback from me (on all five stories); and are happy that they have reached some kind of resolution of
their issues (which might take two or three, or more, rounds of email correspondence), I will then move into research analysis
mode.
5. How will I analyze my data?
In research analysis mode, I will:
(a)
Immerse myself in the data from the counselling emails; and from the diary entries.
(b) I will use Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to identify the themes across stories - the commonalities
of experience, if you like; or the commonalities of narrative discourse.
Additionally, I will be using Kolb's Learning cycle to synthesize those themes into some kind
of conclusion.
And finally, I will feed my synthesized results back
to the (6 or 8) research participants, and ask them to read the text, and comment upon it as appropriate.
If necessary, I may ask (some or all of) the research participants for a telephone interview,
to clarify any difficulties in interpretation or analysis.
6. Ethical considerations
The main ethical issues
in my proposal are:
1. Maintaining confidentiality of counselling email texts
and diary entries. These will be stored in a secure filing cabinet, and destroyed as soon as possible after
writing up the book text.
2. Anonymizing the participants’ stories, so
they cannot be identified by any details of location, gender, name, age, story features, and so on.
3. Maintaining informed consent as an ongoing process. This will be achieved by designing a no-pressure
entry process (see Section 2: How am I proposing to do the research); plus multiple exit points; and explicit permission
for anybody to leave the research at any time without any need to explain or excuse themselves.
4. Protecting research participants from ego-anxiety or threats to their self-esteem; and other
emotional disturbances.
5. At the end of
each story analysis phase, I will consult each of the participants to see if they still want to continue with the research
project, or if they would prefer to leave.
~~~
POSTSCRIPT
If you want to apply to join this research project, please complete the following form:
Informed Consent Form
I am willing to volunteer for this research project,
on the terms spelled out above?
Electronic signature:
Date:
Surname: ________________________________
First name: ______________________________
Email address: _______________________________
Telephone
No. for contact:
Date and time (and time zone) that I can contact
you.
Instructions
Please
copy this Postscript, past it into an email, fill in the blanks, and send it to Jim.byrne@abc-counselling.com.
On receipt of your email containing this postscript,
I will contact you by telephone to discuss how well you and this research project might fit together, and to ensure that you
will not be exposing yourself to any unnecessary risks.
~~~
Thanking you for your time and attention.
Best wishes,
Jim
Dr Jim Byrne
Executive Director
The Institute for CENT Studies
~~~
[1] Smith, J.A. and Osborn, M. (2003) Interpretative phenomenological analysis. In Smith, J.A. (ed) Qualitative
Psychology: a practical guide to research methods. London: Sage.