What is the impact of non-affirming attitudes towards LGBT+ clients shown by private practice therapists working in the UK?
The study
Thank you for your interest in taking part in this study. The study is being carried out as part of a Masters dissertation project by Edward Thomas, a post-graduate student at Bath Spa University and counsellor in private practice.
What is the study about?
The aim of this study is to better understand LGBT+ client’s experiences of receiving counsellor from private practice counsellors in the UK. The study draws on existing research which demonstrates that non-affirming attitudes towards LGBT+ people can have a harmful effect on their experience of counselling. It seeks to better understand what kinds of non-affirming attitudes occur most commonly and which of these have the greatest impact on clients. This will be done by asking clients about their personal experiences of counselling.
What will my participation in the study look like?
You will be asked a series of questions about your experiences of counselling. Each question will ask about a different example of non-affirming attitude. In the first section you will be asked if you have experienced this, and asked to provide further details if you have experienced this. In the second section, for each experience you have provided a ‘yes’ answer to, you will then be asked a series of further questions about the impact this had on you. The further questions will be multiple choice questions on a scale from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. An answer will be required for each question, to ensure no question is missed by accident, but you can answer no and not applicable if a question is not relevant to you.
The information will be collected in the form of an online form which you will complete. This form will be completed anonymously and will not identify you in anyway. You will be asked to provide an identifier of your choice, which will only be used in the event that you wish to withdraw from the survey. Other than completing the survey, you will not be required to take any other actions as part of the study.
What will happen with the answers I provide?
The answers you provide will be used to analyse experiences of non-affirming attitudes towards LGBT+ clients. The answers from the first section will be used to inform an analysis of the most commonly occurring non-affirming attitudes and the common themes which appear in clients’ experiences of these. Descriptions given of your experience may be referred to anonymously in this analysis, but no individuals will be identified in this. The answers in the second section will be used to inform an analysis of the impact these experiences had on clients based on their answers to the multiple-choice questions. This section will consider how clients responded to each question on a scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree.
Please visit the following link for further information and to participate in the study: https://forms.gle/Ugz2CNDJtjEJAC6s5