MAY 2008
TOWARDS RESEARCH
by Hans TenDam
The member survey showed members are interested to contribute to research. What kind of research do we need? What kind do we want? And what is practically doable? Research requires the kind of discipline not all therapists have.
What questions do we wish to answer? We could start with finding out how we are doing. So we need to find out what is the input, the throughput and the output of our work.
1. Input: What people are seeking our services and why are they seeking our services?
2. Throug
hput: What do we actually do to them? What methods do we use? What interventions?
3. Output: What are the results? How do we measure those?
In the board, Ulrich Kramer has taken research upon him. I had already an interesting e-mail discussion with him about the subject. Of our members, Fons Van den Heuvel has indicated his willingness to set up the database that we will use. In the near future you may expect our first steps in this direction. It will take some time before we can start
the proper research. What data are we going to collect? What data do we want to know about clients? Age and gender, presumably. Educational level, probably. Presenting complaints, almost for sure.
As to intervention methods, we should at least differentiate between sessions in which past lifetimes were encountered and those in which the client stayed in the present lifetime. We should probably note if some spirit releasement work was done, and so on.
As to results, how to measure and record them? How does the therapist know? How do the clients report? And when? Right after the session? After a week? After three months? Or should we just have the impression from the therapist? Even if we trust the therapists, some will be more pessimistic, others more optimistic.
It will be quite a task to devise a simple scoring form that is easy to fill in for therapists. And we should define beforehand how we are going to analyze the data with what kind of descriptive or inferential statistics.
Many research efforts have come to nothing, because the researchers didn’t think through in advance how they would analyze the collected data. We have to study the research that has been done already. We have to find out which therapists, like Marion Boon and Barbara Bachmann, already have collected data about their sessions.
We also have to realize that although we talk about regression therapy, not everything we may do, is regression and even not always therapy. Therapy contributes to personal growth and some will come for that.
Our first step would seem to find out how our members talk about what they are doing. We need to establish a common vocabulary. So you may expect from us questions like:
* What do people come to you for, mainly? Is it to see their health improved? Their emotional state? Their ability to handle life? Their understanding of “why am I here”?
* Please list the presenting complaints you deal with.
* What do you note about your clients at the start of a therapy?
* What do you consider a good result of your therapy?
* How do you get to know the results?
* How do you know that the results are lasting?
* How do you obtain your results? Please list the methods that you use.
* How did you get your methods? Literature? Training? Supervision? Your own experience?
We will collect and summarize all of the answers as well as we can. We may get back to participants to ask for clarification at some points. We will feed back the summary to the participants and try to distill from it a well-defined vocabulary we will use to set up the database that will process and analyze our collective experience. We will need to define a kind of standard form in which to record clients, sessions and results.
Once we have a research design, a database design and a recording form design, we can organize the participants, the duration, the collection, the analysis and, not least of all, how to report the results inside and outside EARTh. We should show the world we
are not afraid to face the facts about our own therapy and we don’t assume we know already everything there is to know. And we want to show that we don’t base our work on metaphysics or religion or sectarian concepts and practices.
We can’t go for scientific rigor right away. But we could start with answering questions that are useful for ourselves, like:
* What do we find as causes of presenting complaints?
* Do we have more success with some types of presenting complaints? What can we do about asthma or diabetes or depression or phobias?
* Are some types of intervention more successful than others with certain presenting complaints?
If you have a scientific background and when you have interest in participating in the set-up of all this, mail us. We might set up a kind of research committee. We may go slow on this, but we will proceed.
Hans TenDam
