LBSU 302

Week 5- Finding Empirical Articles

My Journey Continues…….

           

Hello again fellow bloggers and classmates! This week has been exciting and

exhausting, and I am sorry to say that I am glad it is almost over. I am not sure if 

have a tough subject to tackle or if I am just not that good at research just yet.

Regardless of which one, the research process is extremely time intensive for me.

Upside, however long it takes me, I am happy with my results once again. I was 

able to find an article written about a study done on the effects of therapist self-

disclosure on the outcome of the therapy itself. With my question being, “when is 

it ethical for therapists to self-disclose?” my research can go in many directions. I 

could look at the ethics attached to therapy, the ethics associated with therapist 

self –disclosure, the when and the what of therapist self-disclosure, and the effects

of therapist self-disclosure on the client. Additionally, I could look at how 

therapist self-disclosure effects the therapist-client relationship. In reality, I will 

need to look at all of these aspects in order to answer my question.

            While doing my research this week, I stumbled upon several questions 

closely related to my topic. One question is, how therapist self-disclosure effects a 

client’s willingness to self-disclose? Another is, how does therapist self-disclosure 

effect a therapist’s credibility with a client? Additionally, I am interested to know 

how clients perceive therapist self-disclosure.  One more issue I want to explore is 

whether withholding therapist disclosure impairs treatment.

            I have learned so much over the last few weeks about my topic due to all of

my newly learned research strategies. I still find it difficult to find specific 

information in Leatherby Libraries, but have learned new Google strategies to 

help with that. For instance, you can Google Scholarly Articles on a specific 

subject. Most of the time you will find what you are looking for, but you will not 

have full access to it. That is when Leatherby Library comes in, at least for me. 

           Well that is all for now fellow bloggers! Thanks again for reading my blogs 

and I will see you next week!

LBSU 302

Week 4- Finding Articles

My Journey Continues……….      

    Hello fellow bloggers and classmates! I am happy to report that I finally have a

topic narrow enough to have a research question. It has taken way more effort

than I originally planned, but completely worth every hour spent.  When I decided

to change careers, it was something that I had thought about for a long time. It

wasn’t on a whim. However, if it weren’t for this class I wouldn’t fully know what I

was getting into, or what options I would have after school. So for that, I am so

grateful!

Now, on to my weekly research…….

    This week I was interested in the further narrowing of my topic, hoping that I

could come up with a worthy research question. I read a few chapters in my book

from last week and decided that the topic of self-disclosure was of great interest

to me as well as having great significance in the role of a clinical social worker.

As a clinical social worker, you work very closely with individuals with a wide

range of psychosocial problems and disorders, in a clinical setting, providing

counseling and therapy. After doing extensive research this week, and reading

many articles, I have found that therapist self-disclosure is a hot topic that is up

for debate. To self-disclose, or not to self-disclose?  Some research states

therapist self-disclosure is harmful to the patient, and some research states it is a

great tool when used correctly in order to enhance the client-therapist

relationship. Either way, therapists are doing it, and I am sure to some extent I

will be faced with the question at some time in my career, and I want to know

when it is ethical and when it is not.

I had great success this week finding articles relevant to my topic. Finding

scholarly articles was much easier for me than finding books, possibly due to the

vast database of information available at the Leatherby Library. I used almost all

of the advanced search options to narrow down my search. This week I did

something I had not done previously. I chose an additional AND-KEYWORD with

Title as my field. This was extremely helpful in narrowing down articles that had

my keyword actually in the title. At that point I just needed to decide on which one

to choose, because most of the articles had some relevance to my topic. In the

following weeks I hope to find more research that explains ethics in relation to

therapist self-disclosure. Wish me luck!

Thanks again for reading my blog!!! See you next week!!!

LBSU 302

Week 3

The Journey Continues…..

     Welcome back to my journey! This week was interesting, full of frustrations and triumphs. I

have never known research to be that way, but I have a feeling I have never put this much

into it before. As I stated last week, I changed my focus to Clinical Social Work to narrow it

down. Guess what? I have narrowed it down again. While doing my research this week,

again, I found that there are an endless number of environments for a Clinical Social worker.

You could work with people struggling with poverty issues, or with people fighting addictions,

or even in corrections. However, I have discovered that I am most passionate about trauma

survivors and counseling. With that said, I chose the book, Trauma Counseling: Theories and

Interventions, by Lisa Lopez Levers, for this week’s assignment and research. I chose this book

because it encompasses a wide range of traumatic events along with guidelines for different

treatments. I have also discovered while doing this research that I am particularly interested

in long-term trauma, and so I am looking forward to reading that section in the book.

    I used Leatherby Libraries for the first time this week and it was amazing. The best part for

me, is the fact that I have free access to a book that would otherwise cost me $80.00. All

kidding aside, after I learned the tricks to advanced searches, it was amazing how much

information was there. The most important thing I learned while doing advanced searches, is

to choose your words wisely. The order of your words, the context of your words etc. For

instance, Clinical Social Work mostly entails counseling, but in a number of settings. If you

type in Clinical Social Work as your key words, it reveals no results, but if you type Social

Work it reveals too many results. So I broke it down further, to counseling and then again to

trauma. Additionally, I learned a great way to limit the number of results is to limit my search

to the last five years, which almost narrowed it too much. Another thing I found helpful in my

search was limiting my search to E-Books only. I did this because I wanted instant access to

the entire text and knew I was too short on time to get it any other way.

Thanks for reading my blog, see you next week!

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The Journey Continues……

Week 2-Finding and Evaluating Background Information

                Whew! That is what I have to say after doing this week’s research into my topic, career

opportunities in the field of social work.  What I have discovered while doing my research is that 

there are so many different roles that a social worker may have, if you haven’t narrowed it down to a 

specific category, you are in trouble! That is where I am, in trouble! I did however broaden my 

knowledge of career paths for social workers. I found that if you are interested in child welfare you 

could work with adoption agencies, child day care facilities, foster care agencies, and family 

preservation agencies, in addition to the most common Child Protective Services (CPS) that everyone

has heard of. I also learned that if you have an interest in School Social Work, you may not work in a 

school, but rather an early intervention program or special education placement offices. Lastly, and 

most importantly, I learned that Clinical Social Workers work in almost all aspects of Social Work, 

including, but not limited to, Alcohol and drug abuse treatment, individual and family counselling, 

grief counselling, victim services, corrections, aging, child welfare, health care, and group therapy. 

With that said, my blog focus has now evolved, from this point forward, toward a focus on clinical 

social work. 

          

         While doing this assignment I learned a whole lot more than I had in mind. I know, how could

you have too much information? Well, I guess it wasn’t too much information, just the wrong

information. I used Gale Virtual Reference Library and I also did several advanced Google searches

(which I had never done before), to do my research. I also restricted my searches to .edu, .gov, and 

.org domains’ in order to find credible sources (my first time for this also).  I got a whole lot of 

information about attaining the education needed for a social work degree, and when my criteria was 

narrowed, I found information on specific fields of social work. It was very difficult to find what I 

was looking for, however I did finally find a great source of information that lead to the evolution of 

my blog. It was a long and grueling process and I am glad this part is over.

       Thanks for reading my blog and stay tuned for more information about clinical social work!