Mentoring Psy.D. students in meaningful research.

Ripley, Jennifer S. ; Yarhouse, Mark A.

Mitch Albom (1997) wrote a story about a mentoring relationship with his professor in the now-famous book Tuesdays with Morrie. The book encouraged the reader to consider what is important in the world, and the frame of this consideration is through a personal relationship with his dying professor. Its subtitle "An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson," is the nature of mentoring in its highest form. The professor with limited time communicates his most important wisdom about love, relationship, and gratitude to Mitch who then shares the mentoring with the world.

Our Mentors

Both of us were mentored by excellent Christian Psychologists ourselves. I (Mark) was mentored by Stanton Jones at Wheaton College. Stan has a tremendous grasp of a number of fields that are essential to integration research: psychology, of course, but also theology and philosophy (particularly philosophy of science). I worked as Stan's research assistant for 4 years during my doctoral studies, a period during which he transitioned to the role of Provost (senior academic position) at Wheaton. While much of the mentoring I received was during graduate school, it has continued through our collaboration on projects since I began my academic career in 1998. Stan has a heart for the Body of Christ. He models what it means to take what he believes to be right and voice that conviction in the face of opposing worldviews, to speak up in front of one's professional peers. Christians should not underestimate how difficult this can be. Samuel Johnson said it well: "Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other." I recall Stan sharing with me a moment when he served on Council of the American Psychological Association (APA, the Council of Representatives is the senior governing body) and took a public stand on issues related to euthanasia. His position was consistent with Christian ethics, but it went against the emerging consensus of the leadership of the APA. We all weigh these moments: should I speak up? What will others think? Will my one dissenting voice make a difference anyway? How will this impact my potential influence on others later? But I have learned from Stan that there is a need for more Christians to live out their convictions in the context of their professional roles and relationships. I have also learned that being a critical consumer of research and understanding insights from philosophy of science is essential to providing accurate information and interpretations of findings to the church today.

I (Jen) was mentored by Everett L. Worthington, Jr., at Virginia Commonwealth University. Ev is an excellent mentor who invests deeply in his students and has produced some excellent Christian psychologists through his infectious love of research, and his sense of purpose in influencing both Christians and the general field of psychology for positive values such as forgiveness and healthy marriage. Ev and I spent time together each week working on research projects, but it was the inspiration of spending time focusing on research on positive values that made the work meaningful. Ev once said that there are people for whom doing research is like their hobby--they will do it regardless of external incentives because they enjoy it. I caught the bug and by the time I arrived at Regent I knew that conducting and writing meaningful values-driven research was something I would look forward to doing as a significant part of my career.

The two of us have the pleasure and privilege of teaching in the same Psy.D. program as new professors with freshly minted degrees arriving in 1998 (Mark) and 1999 (Jennifer). We have certainly influenced each other in the building of our research programs. While we each have separate research centers, we have learned from each other in terms of methods of mentoring students so that we could conduct meaningful studies with limited resources. We have reviewed many of each others papers before sending them off to publishers. We are convinced that inspiration from each other and many of our other colleagues at Regent has made both of us better researchers.

Our Setting

Regent University is a Christian college that has primarily been focused on graduate education with a "teaching college" emphasis. The program we teach in is an APA-Accredited Psy.D. Clinical Psychology doctoral program with a practitioner-scholar model. We train our students to be "local clinical scientists" after the model advanced by the National Council of Schools and Programs of Professional Psychology (NCSPP). In terms of research the goal of the program is to train excellent applied clinical psychologists who work in applied settings, and hold a strong respect for the value of scholarly research, and who are able to operate as local clinical scientists in organizations.

Mark established the first research team at Regent's Psy.D. program in 1998 with a study of Hope Focused Couples Counseling through our on-campus clinic. Numerous students participated in the study as clinicians and helped collect data. There were two good dissertations built off of the study and one was published (Buchard et al., 2003). Since that time we have both built our separate research teams. Mark Yarhouse's team focused primarily on the study of issues of same sex attraction and sexual identity conflicts for religious people. Jennifer Ripley's team has focused primarily on the study of couples counseling that accommodates religion. We both started research centers on campus, the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity (ISSI; www.sexualidentityinstitute.org/) and the Marriage Ministry Assessment Training and Empowerment Center (MMATE; www.hopecouples.com). It is common for us to mentor the same students because many students have participated in both teams and we have lost count of how many dissertation committees we have sat on together.

As we reflected on how we find success in our research work within our setting we found there are four goals we strive for: (1) to do meaningful research, (2) to create significant relationships with students through research, (3) to focus students as a group on larger research projects to increase impact, and (4) to use our research to communicate a message to the field of psychology, communities, churches, and the world.

Goals of our Research Programs

Goal #1: Do Meaningful Research

Ripley. It is important to have a purpose for the research that we engage in. I (Jennifer) am all about the "triple dip" in doing research. The triple dip is creating one project with multiple purposes or rewards. I see three purposes to my research agenda. I try to make choices in what I do by explicitly considering these purposes. The first purpose is to train students, the second is to provide quality care and service to research participants (who are simultaneously couples who have sought couples therapy), and the third is to add to the body of knowledge in my specific area of research.

The first purpose for me is to train students to be excellent couple therapists through clinical research work. Since this is the priority I spend much of my time meeting with students, reviewing clinical reports, and making decisions for research that are good for student training. This priority reflects not only the program that I am teaching in, a Psy.D. program primarily training students to be excellent practicing psychologists, but also my own interests. If given the choice between improving ideas and improving people, I would choose people. Training students not only improves them as people, and teaches them research design, but also improves their clinical work as they serve clients, groups and agencies in the future. This seems to me to have the potential of the highest impact.

I have had two different systems of supervision for the treatment of couples seen in my lab. One is a tiered supervision where fourth-year students supervise second and third year students in group supervision setting on their cases. Then I, or myself and another faculty who has been involved in the study. Recently, Vickey Maclin, provided group supervision of the fourth-year students. First-year students observe cases as a research assistant assigned to cases, and they participate in group supervision. This has worked well for a large project (with about 32 students involved) and was well liked by students. There was a need to change the research programs, however, and the research moved to a more in-depth case study design. Thus the project was downsized so that 12 third- or fourth-year students provide therapy with myself and Dr. Maclin providing direct group supervision. Second-year students are co-therapists with more senior therapists to learn the approach, and first-year students observe cases and do behavioral coding of videotapes. Students are generally free to be involved in the research either purely clinically, or to participate in the research analysis with presentations and articles, or both.

The second purpose of the MMATE Center is to provide a venue to conduct research that provides a service or benefit to the research participants who are couples who have sought couples counseling. Because I teach in a Clinical Psychology program, there is a synergy of purposes. We can both see clients and do research. Graduate students are capable of providing clinical or assessment services to couples from the community. Providing quality care can require a substantial level of work in (1) networking in the community to stimulate referrals to couples counseling, (2) creating online information and assessment options, (3) screening couples for suitability for short-term treatment, and (4) supervising students with extra attention for difficult cases. The research indicates that couples are benefitting from the interventions and the cost is low.

The third purpose is to add to the body of knowledge in my area of research. There is a strong body of research on the efficacy of couples therapy. Several approaches to couples therapy have been deemed empirically supported. The research I am doing builds on what has proven effective in other labs and expands it by developing religiously accommodative couples therapy with components from various empirically supported approaches and a heavy focus on developing hope for couples (Ripley & Maclin, 2012). The work of adding to the body of scientific knowledge includes encouraging quality dissertations, presenting with teams of students at conferences, or co-authoring papers.

Yarhouse. I have found it helpful to organize my research team into three areas: research, training, and clinical services/consultations. We meet as a team twice a month for research team meetings where we focus on designing and implementing original research on sexual identity. Because there has been so little research conducted by Christians in the area of sexual identity, we have found that there is ample opportunity to conduct research that touch on a broad range of applied topics: sexual identity development, mixed orientation marriages, race/ethnicity and sexual identity, the experiences of sexual minority Christians on Christian college campuses, campus climate, reducing shame among Christian sexual minorities, and so on. We often try to follow important topics in the mainstream gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) research and then think critically about variables from a Christian perspective.

Training occurs in most of the research meetings. After we update each other on current projects, we focus 30-45 min. each meeting to training. Topics have ranged from theological issues and sexual ethics to how to provide clinical services following the Sexual Identity Therapy Framework (see www.sitframework.com), including advanced informed consent, assessment, and treatment planning/ case conceptualization.

Training also overlaps significantly with the clinical services/consultations we provide. Clinical services are sometimes offered directly out of ISSI but they are typically offered in conjunction with my own clinical practice, where I meet with clients and make that session or consultation available for students to observe. At Regent University, we have the opportunity in our Psychological Services Center on campus to use the observation tunnel while I meet with clients and conduct SIT or a clinical consultation. Senior team members can often participate in a consultation with me by interviewing the parents, for example, while I have a session with an adolescent. We then debrief these as a team following the session. We have also offered SIT in group therapy format. I have often co-led these groups with senior ISSI team members, although the last several groups have been led by senior research team members, and I provide weekly supervision.

Goal #2: Use Research to Create Significant Relationships with Students

Research is part of "the work" of a professor and generally highly valued in University-life. It is important to remember that in an eternal economy the work of research has limitations. There is the nature of research itself, which requires replication and remains subject to bias. Research is constantly being replaced with new paradigms and methodologies. Research is by its nature temporary. This doesn't diminish the importance of adding to the body of research. Like the book Tuesdays with Morrie, it is important to understand that the relationship is the context out of which the wisdom of research can be understood best.

There was a student whom I (Jennifer) was working with some years ago. She had a strong interest in government- and community-based marriage programs. At the same time, a statewide marriage initiative was developing with a common goal of pursuing federal grant funding. So this student and I decided to attend a meeting about the marriage initiative in a city about 4 hours away. We met up very early in the morning and loaded up my mini-van to drive out to the meeting. Although the marriage initiative for the state never actually coalesced and folded about 2 years later, nonetheless the eight hours in the car with the student were not wasted because our relationship was strengthened. The mentoring was enjoyable. We discussed her dissertation and future career plans, issues relevant to women in the profession, and ideas about training psychologists. Moments like this create relationship out of a common enjoyment of "the work" of research. For other students I have mentored in research, the topic of the research has become very relevant to their personal lives. It is an honor when students share how research on marriage has either caused them to focus more deeply on their own marriage or to bring healing to broken places in their life. When a student comes to you and shares a spiritual truth discovered in more depth through his or her dissertation, and you watch his or her character develop in front of you to respond to that truth, that is an investment in the kingdom of God. Nothing is more rewarding.

I (Mark) typically have what I consider to be a relatively large research team (about 10-12 Psy.D. students, typically 1 MA Counseling student, and 2-3 PhD Counselor Education and Supervision affiliates). It is challenging to really mentor students given the size of the team. To facilitate mentoring relationships, I meet weekly or biweekly with my Research Assistants. These are typically my senior ISSI team members who have more responsibilities on the team. They often serve as Research Coordinators for a specific project (in addition to working on their own dissertation), and I meet with them through the research project we have underway. I also provide mentoring on professional development and, less often, personal and spiritual matters if they want to discuss those matters.

As a team, we pray about the work we are doing--about the projects that are underway, for wisdom and discernment in our work, for which projects to take on, for the people represented by the research we are conducting, and for our general health and well-being. We do this in our research team meetings, and we have a separate sub-set of team member volunteers who have recently been meeting independently to pray for our work. We also travel together to conferences, whenever possible. This has been great for team-building and has provided opportunities for modeling and networking, as well as informal mentoring, fellowship, and collegiality. Also, whenever I speak locally, I try to invite a senior team member or two to co-present with me. This gives that student an opportunity to present, and it gives me an opportunity to work more closely with that student on preparation, to discuss how to present findings to various audiences, and to model how to respond to difficult questions given the nature of our topic.

My personal and professional "brand" is "convicted civility," following Richard Mouw (1992). The idea here is that we need Christians who can speak their convictions and do so with respect and civility. Keep in mind that our area of research is more controversial than most and lends itself to more extreme emotional reactivity. I try to model and teach how to live out this brand in every facet of our work. Several of my students have commented that while they hear me present often, they find the Q&A to be the most informative in terms of how to respond non-defensively and with convicted civility to audience members.

Goal #3: Focus Students' Research to Work as a Team to Maximize Effects of Small Studies.

One of the unique opportunities of teaching in a Psy.D. program is a larger number of students per cohort. While a typical Ph.D. program may have 6-10 students our program accepts approximately 20 students per year. With 10 core faculty, this means that we typically mentor 2-3 students per cohort in their dissertation. This creates an opportunity for focused partnerships in dissertations. Typically, Psy.D. students want to do meaningful and quality research but are not planning to launch a research career with their dissertations. In addition, the University is not a "Research 1" University with multi-million dollar grants at every turn. In response, the ISSI team and the MMATE Center have worked within this environment by having larger multi-year research studies that we, as the professors, have designed. Then students take portions of the project, or create extensions onto core projects, to create their dissertations.

As an example I (Jennifer) have been conducting a clinical research study of Hope-Focused Couples Counseling for the last six years (www.hopecouples.com). This brings dozens of couples per year into a "couples lab" where they receive couple therapy and are studied. Out of six years of research there have been 10 dissertations working off the larger project who have studied everything from factors that predict poor outcome to the effects of the forgiveness component of the intervention. The dissertations typically have an outlet as presentations at conferences (although students can publish those smaller studies if they want to). The larger research becomes multi-authored articles.

A good example for me (Mark) would be a line of research that we have been conducting on the experiences of mixed orientation couples (MOC, or relationships in which one person is a sexual minority while his or her partner or spouse is heterosexual). The larger MOC longitudinal study would be published as a multi-authored contribution, while senior students would have an opportunity to add items or scales to study variables that they are interested in and that would enhance the literature in this area. Three dissertations have been completed from the MOC project, and at least one more is in process. A similar structure for conducting research has been used in studies on sexual identity development and synthesis, campus climate, and parental responses to the disclosure of same-sex sexuality in an adult child.

Goal #4: Be an Advocate in the Field of Psychology, the Church and the World for Our Messages

Both of us have a message to influence the field of psychology, the church and the world. The MMATE central message is this: there is wisdom found within Christian teaching that is applicable to marriage relationships and marriage therapy. Furthermore we believe that this inspirational wisdom can be studied to fully understand the application of that teaching in practical situations and to promote healthy marriages in every community, church and home.

ISSI's central message is that the sexual identity issues need to be studied from a distinctively Christian worldview. The language and categories our culture uses carry with them assumptions that may or may not accurately reflect the experiences of the believer who experiences same-sex attraction. In the field of psychology, ISSI has an opportunity to help the broader professional community recognize that it has often failed to fully understand the place of religion in the life of Christian sexual minorities. But our advocacy is not intended to be confrontational; rather, we create forums for dialogue in which we bring together professionals who represent the interests of different communities to discuss the research and clinical implications of various findings. It is in this context that we attempt to model convicted civilty. The forums have often been at the APA national conference (Yarhouse, 2000; Yarhouse & Beckstead, 2007) and also at our own colloquia series here at Regent University.

The church has also often failed to adequately support fellow believers who experience same-sex attraction. We often use the same language and categories as the broader culture to make sense of sexual identity issues. One way to address these issues both in the profession and in the edification of the local church is to conduct meaningful research on the lived experiences of religious sexual minorities. We tend to disseminate these findings through workshops with pastors/ministers/youth pastors, trainings for Christian counselors, and consultations with Christian schools/colleges/universities. We advocate for "our people" (Christians who are sexual minorities) in the context of an orthodox Christian sexual ethic. The failure of the local church to address the needs of our people may indeed drive them from our own communities.

An additional area of outreach within ISSI is to work with organizations on superordinate goals. For example, we will advocate for students in the local school who have been bullied and labeled "gay" for gender atypical voice inflection or mannerisms. Also, all of our team members go through volunteer training with a local, secular HIV/AIDS community organization. Research team members then volunteer a minimum of one community event with local staff committed to decreasing the rate of HIV infection in the Hampton Roads area.

The messages of the MMATE Center and ISSI need to be communicated to a busy and noisy world. One of the main ways for us to communicate this message is in conducting meaningful quality research and publishing it. The field of psychology has influence in Western cultures and rising influence in developing countries. One of the missions of our Centers is to influence communities, churches and families to use the research we have conducted to make wise decisions in their relationships. In working in these Centers, we find we can provide an engaging community-based and mission-oriented way to serve God and humans and in doing so inspire our graduate students to participate in research.

References

Burchard, G. A., Yarhouse, M. A., Worthington, E. L. Jr., Berry, J. W., Kilian, M. K., & Cantor, D. E. (2003). A study of two marital enrichment programs and couples' quality of life. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 31(3), 240-252.

Mouw, R. (1992). Uncommon decency: Christian civility in an uncivil world. Downers Grove, IL: Press.

Ripley, J.S., & Maclin, V.L. (2012). Hope focused marriage counseling. In Everett L. Worthington, Jr., Eric L. Johnson, Joshua N. Hook, and Jamie D. Aten (Eds.)., Evidence-based practices for Christian counseling and psychotherapy. Grove IL: Intervarsity Press, in press.

Yarhouse, M. A. (Chair). (2000, August). Gays, ex-gays, ex-ex-gays: Key religious, ethical, and diversity issues. Symposium conducted at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Washington, DC.

Yarhouse, M. A., & Beckstead, A. L. (co-chairs). (August, 2007). Sexual identity therapy to address religious conflicts. Symposium conducted at the American Psychological Association's Annual Conference, San Francisco.

Jennifer S. Ripley Mark A. Yarhouse

Regent University

Correspondence regarding this article should be sent to Jennifer Ripley, Ph.D., School of Psychology and Counseling, Regent University, 1000 Regent Dr., Virginia Beach, VA 23464; jenrip@regent.edu

Jennifer S. Ripley is Professor of Psychology and PsyD Program Chair at Regent University. Her research is in religion and couples dynamics and treatment.

Mark A. Yarhouse is Professor of Psychology and the Hughes Endowed Chair in Psychology at Regent University in Virginia Beach, VA. He is also Director of the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity. His research interests include human sexuality, sexual and gender identity, and ethics.