Exploring Values of Therapists in India
6.5 Studying Therapist Values in India
While there has been a gradual impetus in psychotherapy research to study and understand the therapist’s self, in India we continue to rely on western literature and thus, a greater need extends to generating an understanding of psychotherapy in the Indian context. Manikam (2010) mentioned the increasing demands for psychotherapeutic services and the need for trained therapists and counsellors in India. A handful of institutions in the country are offering courses in psychother- apy training, and a number of other avenues are steadily coming up pointing to the greater need of research and understanding of psychotherapy in India. All these aforementioned reasons indicate the need for developing an understanding of the therapist professional development in the Indian context, and build a knowledge base on the role values play within the therapeutic relationship in the Indian con- text. Indian culture is salient in the values and beliefs it propagates (Sen 2004), considering that the lens an individual adopts to view the world is heavily bor- rowed from the culture in which she or he is embedded, and research specific to the Indian context is needed.
The study aimed at exploring the personal and professional values of experi- enced therapists practising in India, and the sources of their values. To meet the objectives of the study the concurrent triangulation mixed methods’ design was employed (Creswell et al. 2003). The qualitative and quantitative data was col- lected simultaneously, and the findings were triangulated to develop a comprehen- sive understanding of the research area.
A self-designed questionnaire was used to obtain basic therapist information about the respondents’ demographic profile (i.e. age, sex, years of experience, prac- tice settings and educational qualifications), and their practice characteristics (i.e.
their theoretical orientation, professional identity, years of supervision received, ongoing supervision status and if they were currently supervising other therapists).
In order to obtain a personal value profile of the respondents, the Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ, as developed by Schwartz et al. 2001) was administered. The PVQ comprises 40 items, with each item consisting of a description of a person (‘portrait’) with two sentences. The PVQ asks about similarity to someone with particular goals and aspirations (values) rather than similarity to someone with particular traits (Schwartz 2003). The respondents are asked to assess how similar to the portrayed individual they were. The possible answers were as follows—very similar, similar, rather similar, rather dissimilar, dissimilar and very dissimilar.
The responses were coded with scores ranging from 1 to 6, with 6 being very similar and 1 being very dissimilar. The forty items belonged to ten scales. The number of items in each scale was between two and six. The scales are briefly described as follows (Schwartz 2006):
1. Self-direction: The defining goal was independent thought and action: choos- ing, creating and exploring. It derived from organismic needs for control and mastery and interactional prerequisites of autonomy and independence.
It included creativity, freedom, choosing goals for oneself, curiosity, self- respect, intelligence and privacy.
2. Stimulation: The defining goal was excitement, novelty and challenge in life.
The value was a derivative of organismic need for variety and stimulation in order to maintain optimal, positive level of activation. It included aspects of a varied and a daring life.
3. Hedonism: The defining goal was pleasure or sensuous gratification for one- self. The value was derived from the organismic needs and the pleasure asso- ciated with satisfying them. It included enjoying life and being self-indulgent.
4. Achievement: The defining goal was personal success through demonstrating competence according to social standards. Performance that was competent and generated resources was vital for individuals to survive and for groups and institutions to reach their objectives. It included being ambitious, success- ful, capable and influential and having social recognition.
5. Power: The defining goal was social status and prestige, control or dominance over people and resources. It included aspects of authority, wealth, social power, preserving one’s public image and social recognition.
6. Security: The defining goal was safety, harmony and stability of society, rela- tionships and of the self. They were derived from basic individual and group requirements. It included the need for social order, family security, national security, cleanliness, reciprocation of favours, being healthy and sense of belonging.
7. Conformity: The defining goal was restraint of actions, inclinations and impulses likely to upset or harm others and violate social expectations or norms. It was a derivative of the prerequisite that individuals inhibited incli- nations that might disrupt and undermine smooth interaction and group func- tioning. It involved exercising self-restraint in everyday interaction, being obedient, polite, honouring elders, being loyal and responsible.
8. Tradition: The defining goal was respect, commitment and acceptance of the customs and ideas that one’s culture or religion provides. Tradition consisted of the subordination to abstract aspects like religious and cultural customs and ideas. As a value it demanded responsiveness to unassailable expectations from the past.
9. Benevolence: The defining goal was preserving and enhancing the welfare of those with whom one was in frequent personal contact. It was derived from the basic requirement for efficient group functioning and from the organis- mic need for affiliation. The value included being helpful, honest, forgiving, responsible, loyal, true friendship, expressing mature love, having meaning in life and leading a spiritual life.
10. Universalism: The defining goal was understanding, appreciation, tolerance and protection for the welfare of all people and for nature. It was derived from the survival needs of individuals and groups. The value included being broad- minded, having sense of social justice, equality, world peace, beauty, unity with nature, wisdom, inner harmony and the presence of spiritual life.
An in-depth interview guide was developed to collect qualitative data for the study to explore therapist values and the source of the values. The domains of the
interview guide were as follows: professional values, sources of professional val- ues, personal values and sources of personal values.
The sample included currently practising therapists from New Delhi and Dehradun (both cities in north India), with an experience of ten to twenty years, with a minimum educational qualification of a Master’s Degree in Psychology.
Purposive and snowball sampling approach was used to select the participants for the study. Over forty therapists were contacted to participate in the study, out of which twenty-two therapists responded, and ten met the inclusion criteria. Of the ten, eight therapists finally took part in the study.
The data obtained from the questionnaire was analysed using descriptive statis- tics and represented in tables.
Based on the scoring key provided by Schwartz (2003), the forty items on the PVQ were scored under the ten value scales described earlier. The following steps for computing individual and group value scores were followed:
• Scores for the ten values were computed by taking the mean of the raw rating given to the items indexed/listed under the scales.
• Each individual’s mean score was computed across all forty value items.
Schwartz (2003) refers to this as the MRAT (mean rating).
• Next the scores of each of the ten values (as computed in step 1) were centred for the respondent around that respondent’s MRAT (i.e. subtract MRAT from each of the ten value scales). This refers to the centred scores. The centred scores helped in identifying the relative importance of the ten values to a per- son, i.e. the individual value priorities. The top three value priorities of each respondent were chosen by selecting the values with the highest centred scores for that individual. These are referred to as the individual value priorities on
• PVQ.Subsequently, the mean of the individual centred scores on the values was used to derive the value priorities of the group of respondents. These have been referred to as the group value priorities on the PVQ.
The in-depth interviews were audio recorded and were transcribed word by word.
The qualitative data obtained was analysed using Thematic Analysis. Thematic Analysis is a widely used approach for identifying, analysing and reporting pat- terns (or themes) within a data set. Thematic analysis is a flexible approach that facilitates rich and detailed, yet complex description of the data. It is also inde- pendent of theory and epistemology and can be applied across a range of theoreti- cal and epistemological approaches. In Namey et al. (2007) words,
Thematic moves beyond the counting explicit words or phrases and focuses on identify- ing and describing both implicit and explicit ideas. Codes developed for ideas or themes are then applied or linked to raw data as summary markers for later analysis, which may include comparing the relative frequencies of themes or topics within a data set, looking for code co-occurrence, or graphically displaying code relationships. (p. 138)
Thematic analysis allows the researcher to identify and determine in a precise manner the concepts and the relationships between these concepts and compare them to the data gathered from different situations at different times.
The findings from the qualitative and quantitative sections were triangulated to develop a comprehensive understanding of therapist values. The quantitative data (i.e. individual value priorities and group value priorities obtained from the PVQ), along with the values that emerged in the in-depth interviews were integrated to develop an understanding of therapist values in the Indian context.
The quantitative and qualitative data obtained from the study was an in-depth and rich account of therapist values and a first-hand description of the role values played in the participants’ therapeutic practice.