The Environment and the Student in Counseling Psychology

Abstract

This study attempted to answer several questions about the research attitudes (interest in doing research and the personal value of research) of graduate students in counseling psychology, the research training environments in graduate programs, and the impact of programs and environments on students' attitudes. Participants were 358 students from 10 APA-accredited programs who responded to a survey on research attitudes and research training environments (86.1% return rate). Results for the major research questions were (1) recalled research attitudes upon entrance to training did not differ among the 10 programs; (2) on the whole, self-reported research attitudes became slightly more favorable during training; (3) training programs varied widely in both impact on research attitudes and research training environment; and (4) the most impactful programs differed from the remaining ones on several research training environment ingredients, but not on others. The results permit a beginning sketch of the impactful research training environment. Additionally, the role of environment on attitude change seems to depend on students' training levels, suggesting a training environment by developmental level interaction regarding influence on research attitudes.