Research Experience

Indiana University Kokomo Department of Biology -- Research Assistant to Faculty

Type of Research: Aquatic assays and data collection for the IUK Zebra Mussel Research Project

Description: Zebra Mussels are probably the single most pervasive nuisance of North America's fresh water lakes. Native to Europe, with no natural competitors in North America, they reproduce by the tens of millions and literally coat the bottoms of the lakes they inhabit, killing off native wildlife and, in larger lakes, causing millions of dollars of damage to utilities and industries that rely on those lakes. The IUK Zebra Mussel Research Project sought to chart the population growth of zebra mussels in Indiana's largest natural lake, Lake Wawasee, to predict their population growth. My job duties involved counting zebra mussel larvae under the microscope, estimating the counts of mussels growing on collection cages, preparing equipment for data collection, and assisting my research supervisor and one of his colleagues on a data-gathering research expedition.

Indiana University Kokomo Department of Psychology -- Research Assistant to Faculty

Description: "The Solo Effect" refers to a phenomenon that happens when someone is one-of-a-kind in a particular situation, such as a minority person. When they perceive that they are the lone representative of their gender, race, nationality, etc., they divide their attention between the task at hand and what others think of this "token" or solo person. Thus solos, who expend more of their attention than do non-solos in worrying about what others think, often demonstrate performance deficits. To explore this phenomenon, a research team at Indiana University Kokomo under Dr. Sykes sought to evaluate whether males or females who were solos in a "video conference discussion" would manifest performance deficits on a recall task. Subjects were told that they would be participating in a “video conference discussion” with three other “participants,” reading statements off index cards about “how to improve life at IUK.” The other “participants,” though, were actually prerecorded on videotapes so that their gender could be controlled. Subjects encountered one of four conditions:

Condition

Subject

Prerecorded "Participants"

Confederate Researcher

Male Solo

Male Non-Solo

Female Solo

Female Non-Solo

Male

Female

3 Females

1 Male, 2 Females

3 Males

2 Males, 1 Female

Female

Male or Female

Male

Male or Female

Thus subjects were turned into solos or non-solos during the "video conference discussion." Afterwards, the subjects were given a variety of distractor tasks, followed by a questionnaire asking them to recall statements made during the discussion and who made them. Subjects’ recall of the statements made during the discussion and who made them was evaluated as the dependent variable. Solos were compared against Non-Solos as the primary independent variable, and high self-monitors were compared against low self-monitors as a covariant subject variable gleaned from the first post-discussion questionnaire. My job duties included equipment setup, instrument preparation, and acting as a (male) confederate researcher.

Type of Research: Developing an extensive research bibliography, and conducting literature reviews, various research projects, and a content analysis, of the mental health research literature on defining spiritual concepts in mental health and client expectations for spirituality in counseling

Description: The Aitheros Research Institute is a research team devoted to a research program exploring spirituality in the field of counseling. Currently, this involves four endeavors: defining spirituality and related spiritual concepts, assessing the spiritual content that clients would like to address in counseling, investigating the spiritual content that counselors actually do address in counseling and how counselors make clinical judgments based on client spirituality, and exploring the specific spiritual needs of religious traditions that have been particularly misunderstood, stigmatized, and underserved: Paganism and Native American religion. This has also involved the development of an extensive research library on spirituality in counseling.

Defining Spirituality: According to a rapidly growing body of research, religion and spirituality are important psychological issues to include in counseling. Today, psychologists have taken great interest in religion and spirituality as an important part of wellness, as well as a multicultural competency, that form an important phenomenological value system for many individuals. Despite the growing interest and recognition of spirituality and religiousness in psychology, these constructs remain poorly defined in the psychology research literature. Everyone seems to know what they mean, yet operationalizing them has been highly problematic; there is little consensus (McKinnon, 2002). This lack of consensus impedes research and clinical care. A recent literature review by Harris (in preparation for submission) proposes working definitions for the constructs of spirituality and religiousness. According to Harris, spirituality can be conceptualized as an internal belief system in a meaningful relationship with one’s self, others, and a higher power or ultimate reality, while religiousness can be conceptualized as a search for spirituality (or non-spiritual things) in a socially-sanctioned context that typically facilitates searches for spirituality. These working definitions are proposed as “a set of criteria for judging the value of existing operational definitions of religion and spirituality” (Hill et al., 2000, p. 71; cited in Harris, in preparation for submission). Harris calls for future research on defining religious and spiritual concepts in psychology to compare his working definitions of spirituality and religiousness with those that appear in the research literature. More specifically, he calls for a content analysis that focuses on assessment instruments and concept mapping studies published as articles in peer-reviewed journals within the psychology and counseling research literatures. The Ball State Research Team on Spirituality has taken up this call, and is currently conducting such a content analysis. As a starting point, this team wanted a reference list of all the journal articles published in the psychology or counseling research literatures whose primary subject is spirituality, religiousness, or faith in psychology or counseling. No such reference list has been published since Capps, Rambo, & Pansohoff (1976), so the team developed one of its own. This bibliography will be used as the starting point for the content analysis being conducted by the Ball State Research Team on Spirituality. With the explosion of interest in spiritual and religious matters within the fields of counseling and psychology over the last decade and a half, though, this bibliography may prove to be useful for other researchers interested in surveying the research literature.

Assessing Clients' Spiritual Needs: Clients have spiritual needs. According to Bergin (1991), 68% of surveyed mental health professionals agree that to “seek spiritual understanding of one’s place in the universe” is “important for a positive, mentally healthy life-style,” and 41% indicate that this is “important in guiding and evaluating psychotherapy with all or many clients” (p. 395). Many counselors (e.g., Fontana, 2003; Frame, 2003; Hall, 2001) argue that spirituality should be included in counseling, while others (e.g., Helminiak, 2001) contend that spiritual issues should be dealt with by the clergy and religious leaders. Unfortunately, though a considerable amount has been written about what counselors think about the inclusion of spirituality in therapy, little has been published about what clients want. Therefore, the Ball State Research Team on Spirituality is conducting a review of the research literature in counseling and psychotherapy to examine what spiritual needs, if any, clients say they would like to have addressed in counseling. The review began with an initial keyword search of two academic databases – Academic Search Premier and PsycInfo – for peer reviewed journal articles discussing client expectations for the inclusion (or non-inclusion) of spiritual issues in counseling, and the ancestry approach was used to expand this list to include articles that did not turn up in the initial search. Surprisingly little client-report research was found; the preponderance of the research literature addresses counselor opinion or practice. From what little empirical research has been conducted on client expectations, it appears that most clients do want counseling to address their spiritual issues. Beyond that, though, the results are mixed. Some clients want counseling to address their spiritual issues extensively, while others only want them to be addressed in the context of another, more primary issue. Still others do not want their spiritual issues addressed at all. These differences varied based on the religious background of both the client and the counselor. Much more empirical research is needed to explore these issues, and the Ball State Research Team on Spirituality intends to conduct some of it.

Counselor Clinical Judgments Based on Client Spirituality: One of the projects that the Aitheros Research Institute has undertaken is a research project whose purpose is to investigate the spiritual content that counselors decide to address in therapy, and the reasoning underlying those decisions -- in other words, clinicians' attitudes about spirituality in therapy, and the clinical judgments that therapists make with regard to spirituality. What spiritual things are counselors actually doing in therapy? Are they meeting clients' spiritual needs? What decisions do clinicians make when it comes to spirituality, and how do they come to these decisions? What is the state of the clinical judgment literature on spirituality? A literature review is currently under way to investigate these questions, as well as a planned national survey of the clinical judgments that counseling psychologists make of therapeutic outcome in response to African American and Caucasian American secular, religious, and spiritual client vignettes.

Serving the Needs of Specific Religious Traditions: Sensitivity to religious diversity is an important part of multiculturally competent psychotherapy in the United States. The American Counseling Association’s Code of Ethics calls upon counselors to “actively attempt to understand the diverse cultural backgrounds of the clients with whom they work” (ACA Code of Ethics, 1995, A.2.b.). This includes the religious beliefs, values, and backgrounds of clients (Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1995). Likewise, the American Psychological Association’s Code of Ethics states that “where scientific or professional knowledge in the discipline of psychology establishes that an understanding of factors associated with…religion…is essential for effective implementation of their services or research, psychologists have or obtain the training, experience, consultation, or supervision necessary to ensure the competence of their services” (APA Code of Ethics, 2002, 2.01b). When a therapist sees a client who comes from a major religion such as Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism, the therapist has a wide variety of resources to choose from – both scholarly and mass-market – to use in becoming familiar with how to counsel people who ascribe to that religion. Unfortunately, little information is available in the psychotherapy research literature on Paganism or Native American religion to guide counselors who see clients who are members of these religious traditions. In part, this is because of how popular culture in the United States has ignored, misunderstood, or stigmatized these religions. Thus the Aitheros Research Institute has undertaken two research projects to explore each of these religions and provide counselors with information resources relevant to counseling Pagan and Native American clients.

Research Library on Spirituality in Counseling: In order to serve each of these endeavors, the Aitheros Research Institute has been laboring for the past two years to create a library of all the peer-reviewed journal articles published in the psychology or counseling research literatures whose primary subject is spirituality, religiousness, or faith in psychology or counseling. The library began as a reference list of all of these articles – a reference list of approximately 1500 articles. In developing this reference list, though, the ancestry approach (White, 1994) was used, which involved searching the references of each article on the reference list. This necessitated obtaining each of these 1500 articles. So the Aitheros Research Institute was formed, to obtain, archive, and analyze these articles, and form from them a library of spiritual and religious resources for counseling.

Department of Counseling Psychology, Ball State University -- Research Assistant to Faculty

Type of Research: Conducting research on therapists' clinical judgments of therapeutic outcome with African American and Caucasian American secular, religious, and spiritual client vignettes